Spring 2009, Session 2-3 (Feb. 9 – April 3)
Michael Boutin
(3 semester hours)
Morphology, the study of words, is at the conceptual center of linguistics because words are at the interface between phonology, syntax, semantics and the lexicon. Theoretical issues and problems in the study of morphology will be discussed in connection with the analysis of data from a wide variety of languages. After completing this course, students will be able to analyze the internal structure of words and write a brief synchronic description of the morphology of a language. This seminar will address the following questions: What governs morphological forms? How is allomorphy described? How do syntactic and semantic functions affect morphological units? What word-formation strategies are typologically possible? And what should be included in a morphological description of non-documented or sparsely documented languages?
Prerequisite:
AL 4303 Principles of Phonological Analysis
AL 4410b Principles of Grammatical Analysis
AL 5406 Field Methods & Linguistic Analysis
