In this course you will learn to describe how English sentences are constructed and you will develop the skills necessary to analyze sentence structure. In so doing you will use some of tools and methods of modern linguistics.
Describing how English sentences are constructed is not the same as telling people which sentences you consider examples of "good" or "bad" grammar. Rather it is a way of looking inside native speakers' heads in order to find out what they know about the English language that allows them to communicate clearly. What native speakers know about their language is called their "competence." Native speakers' competence includes knowledge about how to pronounce words and sentences (phonology), how to break down a complex word like "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" into its component parts (morphology), and how to relate words and sentences to their meanings (semantics). In this course we will make only passing mention of phonology, morphology, or semantics; instead we will direct our attention to syntax -- the ways in which sentences are constructed from smaller units called phrases and how sentences are related to each other.
By the end of this course you should have acquired skill in analyzing simple and complex English sentences, and you should be able to explain and justify your analysis to other people. You will also be able to draw tree diagrams and will impress your friends by your confident use of technical syntactic terms like adjunct, complementizer, ellipsis, lexical category, modal, and wh-movement.
Describing how English sentences are constructed is not the same as telling people which sentences you consider examples of "good" or "bad" grammar. Rather it is a way of looking inside native speakers' heads in order to find out what they know about the English language that allows them to communicate clearly. What native speakers know about their language is called their "competence." Native speakers' competence includes knowledge about how to pronounce words and sentences (phonology), how to break down a complex word like "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" into its component parts (morphology), and how to relate words and sentences to their meanings (semantics). In this course we will make only passing mention of phonology, morphology, or semantics; instead we will direct our attention to syntax -- the ways in which sentences are constructed from smaller units called phrases and how sentences are related to each other.
By the end of this course you should have acquired skill in analyzing simple and complex English sentences, and you should be able to explain and justify your analysis to other people. You will also be able to draw tree diagrams and will impress your friends by your confident use of technical syntactic terms like adjunct, complementizer, ellipsis, lexical category, modal, and wh-movement.
- Teacher: RC_Bhrendelyn Navales