Summer 2008. Introduction to General and Comparative Grammar in a Cognitive perspective
Project
Diagrammatics
Course description:
This course introduces the principles of stemmatic analysis of syntactic structure in an interlingual and comparative mode. Parsing of sentence structure is a prerequisite for understanding constructions; the stemmatic model of basic syntactic structure developed in the semio-linguistic tradition inspired by original masters such as Otto Jespersen, Lucien Tesnière, and A.-J. Greimas, and elaborated as a method of analysis, a computational formalization, and a theory of language by P. Aa. Brandt, is also a tool for achieving a general notion of grammatical structure and meaning, a support for foreign language learning, and a format for comparative studies of languages.
Syllabus:
Week 1: Stemmatic theory. Linear and non-linear principles of grammatical organization
Week 2: Parsing of English standard verbal and nominal syntactic structures
Week 3: Stemmatic exercises using current text from news media and fiction
+ Mid-term test
Week 4: stemmatization of sentences in other languages known by the participants
Week 5: Special studies of selected grammatical phenomena
+ Final test
Literature:
Brandt, Per Aage, 2004, ”Semio-linguistics and Stemmatic Syntax”, in Spaces, Domains, and Meaning. Essays in Cognitive Semiotics, Bern: Peter Lang, Series European Semiotics, No 4
Jespersen, Otto, (1924) 1992, The Philosophy of Grammar, with a new Introduction and Index by James D. McCawley, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
+ Course papers distributed in class
Justification:
This course will provide a grammatical supplement to all language-related studies.
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