English 106 - Fall, 2013

English Grammar

Class Information

Instructor: Farrell, Patrick
Time: MWF 10:00-10:50
Location: 26 Wellman

Description

Survey of English grammar as informed by contemporary linguistic theory, focusing on the major syntactic structures of English, their variation across regional and social dialects, their historical development, and their relevance to teaching English and writing. Issues to be examined include the nature of language and language change; the concept of grammar and its uses for describing and prescribing linguistic behavior; varieties of English in America, around the world, and across time; the structure of words, including inflectional and derivational morphology, word roots, and etymology; sentence constituents, functions and relations, and parts of speech; English noun phrases and verb phrases and how they are structured by the meanings of nouns and verbs, as well as by modification and finite and nonfinite subordination; and the development of syntactic sophistication in relation to literacy skills.

Grading

4-6 homework exercises
Term project with 5-page textual summary
Participation
Final exam

Texts

Open-access texts available online via SmartSite.