Course Description
A description and formal linguistic analysis of the major syntactic structures in Spanish, including, but not limited to, the interfaces with morphology and semantics. Taught in Spanish.
Athena Title
Spanish Syntax
Prerequisite
SPAN(LING) 3050 or SPAN(LING) 3050E
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
•To have students analyze Spanish structures from a linguistic point of view and gain a thorough understanding of the organization of grammatical structures. •To consider the implications of such knowledge in native and second-language speakers. •To develop critical attitudes about the descriptive and predictive adequacy of grammatical explanations. Data sources may include oral and written language, dialectal data, as well as formal and informal registers. Students will demonstrate this knowledge through problem sets in and out of class, potential data elicitation and oral presentations, a mid-term exam, and a final exam or paper.
Topical Outline
Week I-II: Introduction. Linguistic approaches to the study of Language and syntax. Week III: Fundamentals of clausal and constituent analysis. Week IV: Basics of sentence analysis, as well as problem cases. Week V: Subject-predicate interaction. Week VI-VIII: Syntactic and semantic analysis of additional arguments (direct and indirect objects). Week IX: Adverb analysis and interaction. Week X: Spanish noun and verb morphology. Week XI: Subordinate clauses. Week XII: Analysing questions. Week XIII Analysing variations in word order. Week XIV Analysing clitic pronouns (direct object, indirect object, and SE). Week XV: Further challenges. Conclusions.
Syllabus