Department of Linguistics
The structure of English
Linguistics Tripos: Paper 8 (Old Regulations)
This paper will be taught for the last time in 2009-10. Revision seminars will be provided in 2010-11 for those students taking the paper in the Preliminary Examination 2010 and repeating it in the Linguistics Tripos 2011.
Reading List available on web
- Examination paper 2010 (PDF)
- Examination paper 2009 (PDF)
- Examination paper 2008 (PDF)
Examiners' reports can be found in the MML Library
The course has two closely related aims. One is to cover major aspects of the sound structure and grammatical structure of English, including:
- the structure of sentences and the differences between one type of sentence and another
- the structure of different types of phrase within the sentence - the role of words like auxiliaries (can, will, have etc.), or pronouns (e.g. she, herself)
- restrictions on the syntactic category of words
- the types of morphemes allowed in English (i.e. prefixes, suffixes, infixes)
- restrictions on morpheme combination
- the structure of the syllable and metrical foot
- the relation between word and sound structure
The second aim of the course is to illustrate the structure of languages in general through the analysis of English. This will involve the discussion of particular topics that are sometimes very detailed, such as the position of stress, the different roles of reflexive pronouns (herself or themselves), which exemplify points of theory or bring out important principles.
Preliminary reading:
Barber, C. (1993) The English Language: An Historical Introduction.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. (1995) The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of The English Language. Cambridge University Press.
Huddleston, R. (1988) English Grammar: an Outline. Cambridge: CUP.
[L11B.53]
Giegerich, H. (1992) English Phonology: an Introduction.
Cambridge: CUP. [L10B.21; L10B.19]
Kenstowicz, Michael. 1994. Phonology
in Generative Grammar. Blackwell. [UL 760.b.99.20 NW4]
Spencer,
Andrew. 1991. Morphological Theory: An introduction to word structure in
generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell [UL 760.b.99.4 NW4]
For further information contact Dr Bert Vaux bv230@cam.ac.uk.
Go to other Part II Linguistics papers:
Linguistic Theory (Linguistics Tripos only)
General Linguistics
Language Variation
Phonetics
Syntax
Semantics and
pragmatics
Phonology and
Morphology
Historical
linguistics
Foundations of
Speech Communication
