An introduction to linguistics (= VL für Romanisten "Einführung in die Linguistik" = "Einführung 1")

Dozent/in:

Stefan Schnell

Angaben:

Vorlesung, 2 SWS, Schein, ECTS: 2, Gaststudierendenverzeichnis, Studium Generale, Vorlesung für das Basismodul im BA-Nebenfach "Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft", Basismodul Romanistik Einführung in die französische/spanische/italienische Sprachwissenschaft. Keine Prüfung

Termine:

Di, 10:15 - 11:45, MG1/02.05
Beginn in der zweiten Semesterwoche am 23.10.2018

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

• The lecture will be in English
• FlexNow-Anmeldung ab dem 01.10.

Informationen für Studierende der Romanischen Sprachwissenschaft:

Die Veranstaltung entspricht für Studierende der Romanischen Sprachwissenschaft der obligatorischen Vorlesung (2 ECTS) für das Basismodul „Romanische Sprachwissenschaft“.

In diesem Fall muss die FlexNow-Lehrveranstaltungsanmeldung wie auch die FlexNow-Prüfungsanmeldung über den FlexNow-Zugang der Romanischen Sprachwissenschaft erfolgen.

Inhalt:

This course introduces the student to the skills and techniques necessary for the scientific analysis of language, and to some of the different theoretical approaches to linguistics currently available. The focus will be on the three traditional areas of language structure: sound patterns (phonetics and phonology), the structure of words (morphology), the structure of phrases and sentences (syntax). Students will have an opportunity to practice their skills in the seminar Introduction to Linguistics , which is offered parallel to this lecture. In addition, the lecture will give students a short overview of the world s languages, and an introduction to the resources available for studying them.

Information structure

Dozent/in:

Stefan Schnell

Angaben:

Seminar, 2 SWS, ECTS: 8, Studium Generale, Erweiterungsbereich, Seminar für das Aufbaumodul 2 im BA-NF "Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft" und das Mastermodul 1 "Systemlinguistik" im MA "General Linguistics"

Termine:

Di, 16:15 - 17:45, SP17/02.19
Beginn in der zweiten Semesterwoche am 23.10.2018

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

• The lecture will be in English.
• FlexNow-Anmeldung ab dem 01.10.

ECTS-Informationen:

• im Aufbaumodul: 6 ECTS, Hausarbeit mit einem Mindestumfang von 10 Seiten
• im Mastermodul 1 gilt ebenfalls eine benotete schriftliche Hausarbeit (Umfang nach Absprache) als Leistungsnachweis

Inhalt:

One of the central observation in linguistics is that the same thing can be said in different ways: speakers of natural languages can choose between different sentence structures to express the same content, but packaged differently in accordance with specific communicative contexts. Likewise, specific patterns of information structuring are observable across individual sentences in connected discourse.

In this course, we will discuss basic notions of information structure, including more recent critical work on traditional notions like topic and focus, and non-canonical sentence structures that can be regarded as information structure constructions (left-dislocation, subject-predicate inversion, afterthoughts, etc). We will also be dealing with questions of information status (new versus given, etc), anaphoric relations and referential choice (full noun phrase versus pronoun versus zero anaphor, etc). The methodological focus of this course will be on the empirical investigation of information structure based on naturalistic corpora from diverse languages.

Empfohlene Literatur:

Suggested readings:
Krifka, Manfred. 2007. Basic notions of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55, 243-276.
Krifka, Manfred & Renate Musan (eds.). 2012. The expression of information structure. Berlin & Boston: de Gruyter Mouton.
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form. Topic, focus and the mental representation of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vallduví, Enric. 1993. The informational component. PhD Dissertation. University of Pennsylvania.
Ward, Gregory & Betty Birner. 2004. Information structure and non-canonical syntax. In: L.R. Horn & G. Ward (eds.). The handbook of pragmatics, 153-174. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Writing a sketch grammar: West-Armenian

Dozent/in:

Stefan Schnell

Angaben:

Seminar, 2 SWS, benoteter Schein, Gaststudierendenverzeichnis, Studium Generale, Seminar für das Mastermodul 4 "Sprachwissenschaftliche Methoden" im MA "General Linguistics" und die Mastermodule PLing 3 "Language documentation and analysis" sowie PLing4 "Fieldwork" im Elite-MA "Cultural Studies of the Middle East"

Termine:

Di, 8:15 - 9:45, SP17/00.13
Beginn in der zweiten Semesterwoche am 23.10.2018

Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:

• The lecture will be in English.
• FlexNow-Anmeldung ab dem 01.10.

ECTS-Informationen:

• im Mastermodul 4 gilt eine benotete schriftliche Hausarbeit (Umfang nach Absprache) als Leistungsnachweis
• in den Mastermodulen PLing 3 und PLing 4 gelten ein Portfolio (mind. drei schriftliche Aufgaben im Umfang von je 3 Seiten) oder eine schriftliche Hausarbeit (mind. 10 Seiten) als Leistungsnachweis

Inhalt:

A complete, thorough documentation of a language (variety) traditionally comprises a collection of texts (understood here as a collection of annotated recordings of linguistic performance, whether spoken and/or written), a dictionary (or lexical database) and a grammar, thus forming the Boasian triad.

This course deals with the descriptive (grammaticographic) component of language documentation. It covers more general aspects of grammar writing, including questions about what to include in a grammar, how to structure a description (macro- and microstructure), the choice between the analytic and the synthetic perspective, and questions pertaining to the empirical basis of a grammar (corpus data, acceptability judgments, etc). We will also discuss the specific purpose of a grammar sketch within a documentation project, and how the descriptive process interacts with procedures of data collection. More practically, participants will learn to develop a clear descriptive style of presentation, including the embedding of illustrative examples and the explication of linguistic analyses.

Empfohlene Literatur:

Suggested readings:
Ameka, Felix, Alan Dench, and Nicholas Evans (eds.). 2006. Catching language. The standing challenge of grammar writing. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Evans, Nicholas. 2008. Review of “J. Gippert, N. P. Himmelmann, and U. Mosel (eds.). Essentials of language documentation, 1 – 30. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter”. Language Documentation & Conservation 2.2, 340 – 350.
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2006. Language documentation: what is it and what is it good for? In J. Gippert, N. P. Himmelmann, and U. Mosel (eds.). Essentials of language documentation, 1 – 30. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Mosel, Ulrike. 2006a. Sketch grammar. In J. Gippert, N. P. Himmelmann, and U. Mosel (eds.). Essentials of language documentation, 301 – 309. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Mosel, Ulrike. 2006b. Grammaticography: the art and craft of writing grammars. In Ameka et al (eds.).