Department of Linguistics

School of Languages, Linguistics and Film

Queen Mary, University of London

LIN4200 Foundations of Linguistics
Autumn 2014

Schedule: Thursdays 15.00-17.00, Peoples Palace PP2

Course organiser: Dr Fryni Panayidou (f.panayidou@qmul.ac.uk)
Arts One 1.17A. Office Hours: Tuesdays 10.00-12.00

Additional teachers: Dr Esther de Leeuw (e.deleeuw@qmul.ac.uk)
Arts One 1.09, Office Hours: TBC

Dr Luisa Mart (luisa.marti@qmul.ac.uk)
Arts One 1.24, Office Hours: Mondays 15.00-16.00
Tuesdays 11.00-12.00

Dr Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga (d.lazaridou@qmul.ac.uk)
Arts One TBC. Office Hours: TBC

Dr Linnaea Stockall (l.stockall@qmul.ac.uk)
Arts One 1.10. Office Hours: check http://bit.ly/lstockall

Teaching assistants: David Hall (d.t.hall@qmul.ac.uk)
Tom Stanton (t.g.stanton@qmul.ac.uk)
Melisa Rinaldi (TBC)

There are four seminar groups which are taught by the TAs. Check your personal
timetable online (https://timetables.qmul.ac.uk) to see which group you belong to:

Group A: Mondays 11.00-13.00, Queens EB4a (David Hall)
Group B: Mondays 11.00-13.00, Laws G5 (Melisa Rinaldi)
Group C: Tuesdays 14.00-16.00, Laws 1.19 (Melisa Rinaldi)
Group D: Tuesdays 14.00-16.00, Bancroft 3.15 (Tom Stanton)

Important:

Please use your Queen Mary e-mail address in all e-mails to us. Please write your
name and surname in all your e-mailsotherwise, we dont know who you are!

Quite often we will get an email like the following:

From suug34@yahoo.co.uk Hiya! I forgot to sign the register.

From this, we have no idea who its from, what class or seminar group its relevant to,
what course its about or anything. The email should have read:

From ssfly@qmul.ac.uk Dear Fryni, This is Noam Chomsky from LIN4200
Foundations (Student Number 1234567890). I forgot to sign the register on Thursday
25
th
September, but I was there. Would you be able to update your records? Many
Thanks. Noam

What this course is about
This course is an introduction to Linguistics. By the end of the course you will know the
core concepts and a good range of the terms of modern linguistics and youll be used to
thinking systematically about language. Youll also be able to use some of the basic but
crucial analytical tools of modern linguistics, and youll be able to see how linguistic
argumentation works. Youll have an understanding of how the various sub-disciplines of
linguistics relate to each other. The point of doing all this is to give you the basis youll
need to do more advanced linguistics, and to think profitably about aspects of language in
general.

In addition to the weekly two-hour lectures, youll also have to attend weekly two-hour
seminars which are taught in smaller groups. The seminars will provide you with
practical experience of solving linguistic problems in phonology, morphology, syntax,
semantics and pragmatics. The practical exercises will develop the concepts and
terminology introduced in the lectures. You will learn how to analyse problems which
introduce data unfamiliar to you and how to explore the consequences of the analyses
you propose, and youll gain a practical insight into the process of hypothesis testing in
linguistics in a number of different domains of the field.

Course requirements and policies
Students will be given non-assessed homework for the seminars, based on the exercises
in Fromkin et al. (2011). Homeworks will be assigned during the lecture the week before
they are due.

The course is assessed by four assignments and an exam:

Four 1,000-word write-ups of problem sets (each 12.5%): Four unseen problem
sets will be set in weeks 6, 8, 9 and 10. The write-ups of these problem sets,
which will represent half of the assessment for the course, will be due on the
Sunday of the week after they are set, at 23.59. All assessed problem sets must be
submitted online (using QMplus) in .pdf format by the deadlines given. Penalties
will be applied for late submission. You are encouraged to discuss the material
with other students, but when writing up the assignments, you must do so on
your own. Plagiarism will be treated as a serious offence. Make sure you read the
rules of the Academic Registry and Council Secretariat at:
http://www.arcs.qmul.ac.uk/students/exams/assessment-offences/, as well as the
section on plagiarism in the student handbook.

Exam (50%): There will be a 3.5 hour exam during the exam semester (27 April
5 June 2015). The exam will cover everything we have talked about in class,
plus everything on the readings from the book. However, where it is indicated
that you dont need to read part of the book, it wont be covered on the exam.

Readings
Required:
An Introduction to Language, Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams, Wadsworth, 2010 (9
th

edition)

Recommended:
The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker, Penguin, 1994






Scroll down for Schedule.
Schedule

Date Topic/Teacher/Reading Seminar
25.09.14 1 What is language? 29 or 30.09.14
Fryni Panayidou
Reading: FRH Ch 6 (Part III), Pinker Chs 1-4

02.10.14 2 Morphology 06 or 07.10.14
Fryni Panayidou
Reading: FRH Ch 1 (Part II)

09.10.14 3 Phonetics 13 or 14.10.14
Esther de Leeuw
Reading: FRH Ch 4 (Part II) (pp.189-211)

16.10.14 4 Phonology 20 or 21.10.14
Esther de Leeuw
Reading: FRH Ch 5 (Part II) (exact pages TBC)

23.10.14 5 Syntax I 27 or 28.10.14
Fryni Panayidou
Reading: FRH Ch 2 (Part II) (pp. 77-111, 115-
117)

30.10.14 6 Syntax II 10 or 11.11.14 (after RW)
Fryni Panayidou
Reading: FRH Ch 2 (Part II) (pp. 77-111, 115-
117)


7 Reading Week

13.11.14 8 Semantics I 17 or 18.11.14
Luisa Mart
Reading: Ch 3 (Part II) (you can skip pp. 145-
146)

20.11.14 9 Semantics II 24 or 25.11.14
Luisa Mart
Reading: Ch 3 (Part II) (you can skip pp. 145-
146)

27.11.14 10 Language Acquisition 01 or 02.12.14
Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga
Reading: FRH Ch 4 (Part II) (pp.189-210)

04.12.14 11 Brain and Language 08 or 09.12.14
Linnaea Stockall
Reading: FRH Introduction (Part I)

11.12.14 12 Revision Class
Fryni Panayidou
Reading: everything weve covered! Send me
your questions by 05.12.14.