MA course
descriptions
Phonology
Ia and Phonology IIa: Advanced Phonological Theory A and B
Intermediate to advanced level. Current phonological theories:
rules vs. parameters vs. constraints. Theories of distinctive
features and feature structure. Prosodic phonology and morphology.
Interface issues: phonetics and phonology, morphology and phonology,
syntax and phonology.
Phonology
Ib and Phonology IIb: Current Issues in Phonology A and B
Issues-based programmes centred around the primary literature.
Topics include: output-oriented treatments of syllable structure,
tone, vowel harmony, consonantal lenition and fortition;
phonetically-driven constraints; auditory-acoustic vs. articulatory
features.
Introduction to
Speech and Hearing
The speech chain, speech articulation, physical acoustics,
acoustics of speech production, signal analysis for sound, auditory
coding of sound, speech perception and linguistic decoding.
Phonology IIc: Phonology Research
Seminar
The content of this course will vary from year to year, but will
be based on a number of seminal papers in phonological theory
focussing on a small number of topical issues in current phonological
research.
Syntax Ia: Foundational Issues in Syntax
This course explores core properties of natural language syntax in
the context of several theories of syntax. The Language Faculty,
Constituency & Displacement, Argument Structure, Word Order,
Grammatical Dependencies: Primitives of Syntax.
Syntax Ib: Current Issues in Syntax
The contents of this course will vary from year to year, but it
will be mainly concerned with the syntactic representation of
grammatical relations and the structural conditions these are subject
to. It will normally concentrate on three or four empirical domains
that bear on the issue, for example, control, complex versus simplex
anaphors, resultative predication or transitive expletive
constructions.
Syntax IIa: Interfaces
Syntactic representations are mapped onto phonological and
semantic representations at the PF and LF interfaces respectively.
This course will deal with the way these interfaces constrain the
syntax and the extent to which syntactic operations can be said to be
driven by interface requirements. The course will probably mainly
address issues in morpho-syntax (such as affixation, cliticisation
and bracketing paradoxes, etc.) as well as issues involving prosody
(such as focussing, anaphoric destressing and word order).
Syntax IIb: Advances and Perspectives in
Syntax
This course concentrates on theoretical work in syntax. It is
concerned with foundations that might explain descriptive
generalizations and that could provide a framework with the potential
to guide and stimulate further empirical research.
Syntax IIc: Syntax Research Seminar
The content of this course will vary from year to year, but will
be based on a number of seminal papers in syntactic theory focussing
on a small number of topical issues in current syntactic research.
Pragmatics Ia: Introduction to
Pragmatics
The course is an introduction to pragmatics (defined as a theory
of utterance interpretation or speaker's meaning). Issues discussed
include the nature and goals of pragmatics, the role of context in
comprehension, the relative roles of coding and inference in verbal
communication, and a variety of more specific topics, e.g.
disambiguation, explicit vs. implicit communication, metaphor and
irony. Rather than briefly surveying several alternative approaches
to pragmatics, the course looks in depth at a particular approach
(relevance theory), drawing comparisons with other approaches
wherever possible.
Pragmatics Ib: Topics in Semantics
and Pragmatics
An adequate account
of certain aspects of the meaning of utterances often requires the
development of semantic and pragmatic analyses in tandem. This
applies in particular to the interpretation of the natural language
counterparts of logical connectives, such as conjunction, disjunction
and negation, to scalar terms and to definite descriptions and other
referring expressions. Such accounts developed within neo-Gricean
frameworks and within Relevance Theory are compared and assessed.
Pragmatics IIa: Cognitive Aspects of
Pragmatics
This
course explores the place of pragmatics within a modular view of
mental processing and the interface of pragmatic processing with the
language faculty, the ‘theory of mind’ system and our
more general high-level capacities for problem-solving and reasoning.
Relevant experimental data is considered.
Pragmatics IIb: Philosophical
Aspects of Pragmatics
This
course explores and assesses different ways in which the fundamental
distinctions between semantics and pragmatics, and between explicitly
and implicitly communicated meaning have been made. Relations
between accounts developed within the Philosophy of Language and more
recent cognitively-based approaches to these distinctions are
investigated.
Pragmatics IIc: Pragmatics Research
Seminar
The
content of this course will vary from year to year, but will be based
on a number of recent important papers in pragmatic theory, focusing
on a small number of topical issues in current pragmatic research;
for instance, different approaches to lexical pragmatics, the role of
default inference in pragmatics, the development of pragmatic
competence, kinds of pragmatic impairment.
Syntax option: Optimality Theoretic
Syntax
Offered by Vieri Samek-Lodovici, Dept of Italian
This course investigates the application of Optimality Theory to
Syntax, thus exploring the potential for a unification of syntax and
phonology under a single theoretical framework. The course examines
the fundamental properties that distinguish Optimality Theory from
other major frameworks and its concrete application to
cross-linguistic paradigms involving Italian, English, and other
languages.
Contact time: 2h/week for 10 weeks, Second Term only.
Assessment: by final paper of about 5000 words, or two short ones by
2500 words each, as determined by course tutor.