Typology I: Languages of the World (SS 15)
Welcome to the course website!
Course Description
The course gives an introduction into the diversity of the languages of the world, their geographical distribution, genetical relationships, and their typological similarities and differences. The goal of the course is to give a general impression of the linguistic diversity across the world, but also to discuss approaches to classify languages according to their historical relationships or similarities in grammar. In the main part of the course, you will get to know a variety of recurrent cross-linguistic patterns, many of which can be cast into typological universals. In the accompanying exercises, you will learn to apply typological methods and concepts to data from unfamiliar languages.
News and General information
- The results of the midterm exam are now available.
- Please register for the course: write a mail with the usual data (Name, StudentID, major subject) to your tutor!
- Changed date for the midterm exam: it will be written on June 10th!
- Handout with all the information you need for now.
- The first course meeting on April 15th will be devoted to organizational issues.
- Regular lectures begin on April 22nd.
Course Schedule
| # | Date | Topic | Materials | Links/Literature | Homework |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15.04.2015 | Organization (Deniz Cevher) | Handout | |||
| 01 | 22.04.2015 | Languages & Language Families | Slides | Ethnologue - Languages of the World | Exercises 1 (Solution) |
| 02 | 29.04.2015 | Methods of Historical Linguistics | Slides | Exercises 2 (Solution) | |
| 03 | 06.05.2015 | Phonological Typology | Slides | UCLA Phonetics Lab: Story in !Xóõ | Exercises 3 (Solution) |
| 04 | 13.05.2015 | Morphological Typology | Slides | Exercises 4 (Solution) | |
| 05 | 20.05.2015 | Linguistic Universals & Word Order | Slides | Exercises 5 (Solution) | |
| 27.05.2015 | (No Lecture - Pentecost Holidays) | ||||
| 06 | 03.06.2015 | Lexical Typology | Slides | Exercises 6 (Solution) | |
| 10.06.2015 | Midterm Exam | RESULTS | Last year's exam | ||
| 07 | 17.06.2015 | Case Marking Systems | Slides | Exercises 7 (Solution) | |
| 08 | 24.06.2015 | Nominal Categories | Slides | Exercises 8 (Solution) | |
| 09 | 01.07.2015 | Verbal Categories | Slides | Exercises 9 (Solution) | |
| 10 | 08.07.2015 | Head, Dependent, and Argument Marking | Slides | Exercises 10 (Solution) | |
| 11 | 15.07.2015 | Clause Types, Relative Clauses | Slides | ||
| 22.07.2015 | Final Exam | RESULTS | Last year's exam |