LINGUIST List 5.134

Sun 06 Feb 1994

Qs: Infinitive, Contrastive, Syntax/Morphology Course

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1. Shari Rosenblum, The Infinitive
2. Claudia Gdaniec, Contrastive Linguistics
3. , query: combined syntax/morphology course

In preparation for our article on the six forms of the future in English,
we've met a great deal of resistance in certain quarters to one of these
forms: copula + infinitive
 e.g. The plane _is_ _to leave_ at 3.
 Princess Diana _was_ _to be_ Queen of England

It seems clear to us that the problem arises out of a misunderstanding of the
function of the infinitive in English (cf. Bolinger).

We would greatly appreciate comments and suggestions.

(We're trying to keep this short, but we'd be happy to elaborate if the
 response warrants it.)

Of course, we'll be happy to post a summary to the list.

 Sharona Levy (levysharbklyn)
 Shari L. Rosenblum (slrbmcunyvm)
 Brooklyn College, CUNY

I'm teaching a graduate course on Contrastive Linguistics
(for MEd in ESL, endorsements in ESL and Bilingual Studies).

(a) Can anybody recommend a good textbook?

(b) Does anybody know of recent good contrastive analyses
 Spanish - English
 and/or
 Polish - English?

And finally,

(c) Which English Grammar would you recommend to
 the students (or ESL teachers)?

I'd very much appreciate any suggestions! Thanks a lot.

Claudia Gdaniec
claudialogos-usa.com

QUERY: TEACHING SYNTACTIC AND MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN THE
SAME COURSE

Over the past 20 years, John Daly and I have been teaching a
junior/senior level course at the University of North Dakota
(part of the SIL program there) which provides a first course in
syntactic and morphological analysis. It covers most basic
aspects of morphology and intraclausal syntax, with some
reference to larger structures. We have developed a set of notes
and exercises that could fairly easily be turned into a textbook,
if they would be useful elsewhere.

My basic inquiry is this: How many other universities combine
syntactic and morphological analysis (for undergraduate
linguistic majors) in the same course? Would more schools be
interested in doing so if a suitable textbook was available?

To help sharpen the response, here are other characteristics of
the course:

1. Offered for 4 semester credits. Normally taught in the
 summer session in 9 weeks, 8 hours per week. This includes final
 exams and an 8-day miniature field-methods exercise. Actual work
 with the textbook requires 54 classroom hours.
2. Examples and problem sets are drawn from a wide variety of
 languages, both geographically and typologically.
3. We aim at developing a grasp of theoretical understandings
 shared by all linguists rather than those of one specific
 framework, and at applying theoretical understandings to do good
 descriptive analysis of little-studied languages.
4. Primarily based on transformational grammar, with some
 elements of other frameworks.
5. Topics in syntax include: constituency, grammatical
 relations, phrase structure, subcategorization, obliques,
 nonactive complements, constituent order variation, questions,
 commands, and a brief introduction to relative clauses and other
 embedded clauses.
6. Morphology is handled following Anderson's Extended Word-and-
 Paradigm framework (A-morphous morphology), which formally
 distinguishes inflection from derivation.
7. Topics in morphology include: morpheme identification,
 position classes, inflection vs. derivation, most common
 inflectional categories (with extra attention to case, agreement,
 and voice), suppletion, nonconcatenative morphology, and
 cliticization.

Albert Bickford
University of North Dakota and
Summer Institute of Linguistics (Mexico)
email: albert.bickfordsil.org