Skip to main content
Metropolitan State University (Home)

LING 360 Morphology and Syntax

This linguistics course covers the general theories, assumptions, and techniques involved in the analysis of syntactic and morphological structures within a language and across language typologies. Morphology studies the internal structure of words and their meaningful parts. Syntax studies how words, phrases, and clauses are structured to form complex sentences. The course considers linguistic theories such as productive syntax, morphological processing and storage, syntactic rule manipulation, Chomskyan Framework, synchronic and diachronic morphological perspectives, and ¿language-to-brain¿ corollary. The course emphasizes features associated with second language acquisition.

Prerequisites

4 Undergraduate credits

Effective May 6, 2020 to December 15, 2024

Learning outcomes

General

  • Identify the principal structures of English syntax.
  • Employ linguistics specialized morphological and syntactical descriptive terminologies with a high degree of consistency.
  • Use the rules of word formation to distinguish between types of morphemes (e.g., derivational and inflectional).
  • Distinguish between morphemes, phonemes, allomorphs, and allophones.
  • Identify sentence and clause types (nominal, adverbial, and adjectival) by degrees of complexity, structure, and transformational operations.
  • Analyze core topics in syntax (e.g., constituency, case, and binding).
  • Apply linguistic theories such as productive syntax ("rule-based"), theories of morphological processing and storage, syntactic rule manipulation, the Chomskyan Framework approach, synchronic and diachronic morphological perspective, "language-to-brain" corollary, and others.
  • Demonstrate an intermediate-level grasp of the relationship between syntax and morphology.
  • Develop original academic arguments rooted in independent linguistic analysis.
  • Perform morphological and syntactical analysis with emphasis on features arising in second language acquisition.
  • Critically analyze complex linguistic data sets situated in legacies of colonialism, genocide, linguistic suppression, and linguistic devaluation associated with the teaching of English in historic and present-day contexts.