Language Typology
Linguistics Tripos Part II: Paper 17
MML Tripos Part II: Paper Li.17
Paper Coordinator 2013/14: Professor Ian Roberts
A specimen exam paper and reading list are available from the Linguistics Resources on CamTools.
Aims
- To introduce language typology as the empirical investigation of the range and kinds of structural variation found in natural languages, and to consider the various explanations for this that have been offered in the past half century
- In particular, to introduce formal, psycholinguistic, historical and quantitative approaches to structural variation,
- To familiarise students with the empirical and conceptual issues that arise in the study of language diversity
- To enable students to develop the analytical skills required in the practice of typological linguistics
Scope
- Introduction of central ideas of Greenberg’s approach (implicational universals, harmony, etc)
- Hawkins’ (1983, 1994, 2004) psycholinguistic approach
- Modern-day typology (the contributions of Comrie, Dryer, Keenan, Haspelmath, Corbett, Bickel, Cysouw and others)
- Principles and parameters approaches, and the debate about the value of generative approaches to typology
- Areal and quantitative surveys (including methodological issues, e.g. sampling)
Teaching
The course begins by describing Greenberg’s approach, then outlines Hawkins’ ideas and a broadly Chomskyan approach, before looking at certain key empirical areas.
In addition to deepening students’ understanding of key theoretical aspects of classic and modern typological theory and how these interact with other areas of Linguistics, the supervisions for this paper will aim to develop their ability to read and extract useful information from reference grammars and other language descriptions.
Michaelmas Term
1. Greenberg
2. Hawkins
3. Classical principles and parameters: word-order universals and X’-theory
4. The principles-and-parameters approach and “Greenberg’s Problem” today
5. Modern typology and large-scale areal phenomena
6. Word order in the nominal: Universal 20
7. The null-subject parameter and its critics: Rizzi, Gilligan, Newmeyer
8. Morphology and typology I: traditional types, Universal 27 and the suffixing preference.
Lent Term
9. Morphology and typology II: polysynthesis, “pronominal agreement” and pro-drop
10. Topic prominence and discourse configurationality
11. The typology of interrogatives (Huang, Cheng, Holmberg)
12. Grammatical relations: subjects and ergativity
13. Passives and impersonals (Keenan)
14. Accessibility hierarchies (Keenan & Comrie)
15. Phonological typology I: phoneme inventories
16. Phonological typology II: syllable structure and stress systems
Supervision/seminar schedule
At the start of the course, each student will identify a lesser-studied language for which one or more suitably detailed grammars/grammatical descriptions are held in Cambridge libraries. This may be, but needn’t be, a language whose properties are registered on WALS. The idea will be to devote 2 supervisions, one at the end of the Michaelmas Term and the other at the end of the Lent Term, to sessions in which students report back on what the resources they have available to them allow them to deduce about how their chosen language’s properties compare with those that have been discussed in the lectures and supervisions until that point. The expectation will be that students systematically establish each week what can be clearly or otherwise established about their language and what cannot, so that they are able to produce a coherently presented summary of their findings for the final supervision of each Term. The aim here will be to enable students to discover firsthand what difficulties research on lesser-studied languages entails, and to gain some understanding of the ways in which grammars and grammatical descriptions are written.
Teaching
You will receive sixteen lectures in total, eight in Michaelmas Term and eight in Lent Term. You will also have eight supervisions, normally three during Michaelmas Term, four in Lent Term and one in Easter Term. The Department will also be providing four hours of optional practical classes.
Assessment will be by a three-hour written examination.
Go to other Part II Linguistics papers:
- Linguistic Theory (Linguistics Tripos Part IIB only)
- Phonetics
- Phonology and Morphology
- Syntax
- Semantics and Pragmatics
- Historical Linguistics
- History of the French Language
- First and Second Language Acquisition
- Psychology of Language Processing and Learning
- Language Typology
