Enrollment year
2015/2016
Academic discipline
L-LIN/01 (GLOTTOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS)
Department
DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES
Course
THEORETICAL AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS; LINGUISTICS AND MODERN LANGUAGES
Curriculum
PERCORSO COMUNE
Period
1st semester (21/09/2015 - 23/12/2015)
Lesson hours
36 lesson hours
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites
Learning outcomes
The course aims to provide
- the basic theoretical notions and methodological tools for
cross-linguistic comparison;
- an overview of the current debate on the structural diversity of the
world's languages and the theoretical implications of this diversity.
Course contents
The course aims to provide an overview of the theoretical premises,
methodology, and major research results of so-called functional-typological
approach to the study of language. Several languages will be compared from different
families all over the
world, and it will be shown that, while
languages differ to a great extent in their grammatical structures,
the latter can be accounted for in terms of a number of general
principles that are presumably valid for all languages. The
theoretical implications of these facts will be discussed, with
particular focus on a number of notions that are at the
forefront of the current debate on linguistic diversity, such as that
of language universals (particularly implicational universals and
implicational hierarchies), functional motivations, and competitions thereof.
Teaching methods
Lectures
Reccomended or required readings
Classroom materials will be presented providing a detailed description
of all course topics and relevant references (these materials will
also be made available on the web). References will include a number
of standard textbooks covering exam topics, as well as several
reference works that can optionally be used for in-depth study of
specific topics. Classroom materials can be used as a basic reference,
and should be combined with one or more of the textbooks indicated in
the reference list. Students are welcome to chose any of the latter,
through the following are particularly recommended
Comrie, Bernard
1989 Universali del linguaggio e tipologia linguistica. Bologna: Il
Mulino.
Croft, William
1990 Typology and Universals. 1st Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Song, Jae Jung (Ed.)
2001 The Oxford handbook of linguistic typology. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Whaley, Lindsay
1997 Introduction to typology : the unity and diversity of
language. Thousand Oaks, California ; London : Sage Publications.
Assessment methods
Student assessment is made through exam papers consisting of exercises
and questions on course topics. Some of the course lectures will be
devoted to solving exercises of the same type as those in the exam
papers.
Further information
Student assessment is made through exam papers consisting of exercises
and questions on course topics. Some of the course lectures will be
devoted to solving exercises of the same type as those in the exam
papers.
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