English: syntax and morphology

Teacher(s)

Thewissen Jennifer;

Language

English

Prerequisites

The prerequisite(s) for this Teaching Unit (Unité d’enseignement – UE) for the programmes/courses that offer this Teaching Unit are specified at the end of this sheet.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

By the end of this course, students should be able to: identify and define the concepts pertaining to the field of syntax (e.g. form, function, parts-of-speech, phrase, clause, sentence, form-function interface, etc.); concretely illustrate and analyse English in terms of the syntactic phenomena presented during the course; By the end of the course, students must be able to apply theoretical syntactic concepts to the analysis of authentic English. Students will show a deep understanding of syntactic phenomena in English and will use the terminology presented in the theoretical course precisely.

Content

The theoretical part of this course aims to define syntax and situate it within the wider domain of linguistics. Specifically, students will study the following areas of syntax as well as other additional ones, depending on progress during the term:

Morphology
Morphology definitions and characteristics

• Morphemes: definition
• Morpheme characteristics
• Mopheme types

• • • • Lexical morphemes
      • Grammatical morphemes

Word creation processes
Parts-of-speech
Lexical words :
•    Nouns
•    Lexical verbs
•    Adjectives
•    Adverbs
Function words :    
•    Determiners
•    Pronouns
•    Auxiliary verbs
•    Prepositions
•    Adverbial particles
•    Coordinators
•    Subordinators
Phrases
Introduction to phrases
Five main phrase types in English
Clauses
Valency patterns
•    Intransitive
•    Montransitive
•    Ditransitive
•    Complex transitive
•    Copular
Syntactic functions
•    Subject
•    Direct object
•    Indirect object
•    Subject predicative
•    Object predicative
•    Adverbial
The accompanying exercise sessions will present students with a variety of exercises which aim to concretely apply the syntactic concepts presented in the course proper.
In addition, students will be required to practise their lexical skills via the Vocabulary.com tool. Formative tests will be organised to encourage students in their vocabulary learning activities. They will also be required to engage in a variety of tasks to develop their oral and written proficiency skills.

Teaching methods

This course will include theoretical sessions led by the lecturer and presentations by the students of the chapters read in the reference book (Verspoor, M., & Sauter, Kim. (2000). English Sentence Analysis. John Benjamins). Many interactive exercises will also be included which depend on active student participation.
The course proper will be accompanied by concrete exercises to apply the concepts presented. The theoretical and exercise sessions progress hand-in-hand. Students will also be required to practise their English proficiency skills via a series of communicative tasks (podcast development, reading newspaper articles, listening to authentic English-speaking material, etc.). This represents the continuous assessment section of the course.

Evaluation methods

Written exam in January with theoretical and exercise questions (marking breakdown: 60% theory and 40% exercises)
Important notes:

• If the student scores less than 10/20 on the theoretical questions, that score will be assigned as the final exam grade, even if the student passes the exercise section of the exam. This applies to the January and September exams. In other words, to pass the English syntax course exam, students must pass the theoretical section of the exam.
• If more than one task included in the continuous assessment is not submitted by the student, the student will receive a 0 for the exercise portion of the exam. Only a medical certificate covering the entire period the student had to complete the task will be taken into account.

Other information

If the student chooses to use one or more AI tools (or any other online tools), they are required to systematically indicate all parts where such tools have been used, for example, through the use of footnotes. The student must specify whether the AI was used for information research, text writing, or for improving or correcting the text. Furthermore, the student must mention which AI was used (ChatGPT, Bing, Bard, Chatsonic, etc.) and the date of its use. These information sources must be systematically cited in accordance with the bibliographic referencing standards provided by the course instructor. The student remains responsible for the content of their work, regardless of the sources used.
To ensure that the student’s written work is personal, criteria such as originality, critical thinking, creativity, and illustration with examples (e.g., from their own experience) will be taken into account. Any behavior by the student that prevents or attempts to prevent, in whole or in part, a correct assessment of their knowledge, skills, and/or competencies will be considered an irregularity that could lead to sanctions (0T = 0 fraud).

Bibliography

Verspoor, M., & Sauter, Kim. (2000). English Sentence Analysis. John Benjamins. ISBN: 9027225664 (pdf disponible sur Moodle)

Faculty or entity

> PHLB