Morphology

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Morphology is quite literally the ‘study of form’—in language, the formal means of expressing grammatical and grammaticalized conceptual categories encoded in actual and potential word-signs. This course provides a basic introduction to traditional and more contemporary approaches to word formation and grammatical categorization. We will consider previous attempts to define word and morpheme, the types of factors that condition morphological realization, the notion of paradigm, the nature of lexical entries and competing views about the lexicon, the place of morphology in the overall architecture of a grammar, the characterization of morphological processes as derivational vs. inflectional, and other related topics. We will also devote a considerable amount of class time to working through language data in order to increase your familiarity with some of the more interesting morphological phenomena found among the world’s languages. Course Objectives: The ultimate objective of the course is for you to acquire and deepen your skills in analyzing linguistic data, including gaining practice in using data to build arguments in support of an analysis. You will also learn about some of the major approaches to morphological analysis that have been proposed within a generative grammatical framework. Prerequisites: LING 401 General Linguistics or equivalent; a course in phonology is highly recommended. For undergraduate linguistics majors, this course satisfies the Tier III requirement as a follow-up to LING 224 Grammatical Analysis. Having taken LING 215 Sounds of Language is also highly recommended.