Admission requirements
Familiarity with common linguistic concepts and terminology (e.g. “morpheme”, “allomorph”, “inflection”, “affix”) will be assumed.
Description
Words are a central unit in speech and writing. Studying words in a systematic way brings up all kinds of interesting problems, which will be the topic of this course. Such problems are, for example:
Can words like happy or struggle be split into parts?
Why can we say instagrammable but not ?instagrammous?
Does it make sense that the past tense form of understand is understood?
What is a salad-salad and how do forms like this work?
Is scissors singular, plural or both?
Does English have grammatical gender? How many genders does Dutch have?
We will start out with clear and undisputed cases and then work our way towards more challenging examples. Data will be mainly from West Germanic, but other languages will be considered when helpful.
The course requires active participation and preparatory reading.
Course objectives
After completing this course, students will have
a thorough grounding in morphological phenomena,
the ability to see analytical problems in word structure and give arguments for solutions,
a basic understanding of theoretical approaches in morphology,
the ability to present their knowledge in an adequate manner in oral and written form.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Assessment method
Assessment
Active class participation
Oral presentation
Short paper (“abstract”)
Final paper
Written feedback will be given for all assessments. The final paper can also be discussed in person.
The final paper can be expanded to meet the Extra Requirement for Research Master students.
Weighing
Active class participation: 5%
Oral presentation: 25%
Short paper (“abstract”): 20%
Final paper: 50%
The grade of the final paper has to be sufficient.
Resit
The a resit is possible for the final paper.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
A reading list will be provided at the beginning of term.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Registration Contract teaching and Exchange
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of Contract teaching (with taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
For the registration of exchange students contact Humanities International Office.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Reuvensplaats .
Remarks
Not applicable