Intro to Typology
Fall 1995; Martin French, John Payne
Introduction to the study of linguistic typology involving an
in-depth analysis of the Australian Aborigine language Dyirbal in order
to illustrate variation along major typological parameters of word order and
alignment.
Selected Topics from the Syllabus
- Dyirbal: nouns
- Dyirbal: noun markers and pronouns
- Dyirbal: verb conjugation
- Dyirbal: case
- Dyirbal: topic chain
- Dyirbal: implicated verb complex
- Dyirbal: relative clauses
- Dyirbal: Silverstein hiercarchy and split ergativity
- Typological linguistics
- Word order typology
- Ergativity and accusativity
- Relative constructions
Texts and Selected Readings
Dixon, R. 1972. The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland. CUP.
Comrie, B. 1989. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology 2nd ed. Blackwell.
- Lehmann, W. 1978. Syntactic Typology
- Comrie, B. "Ergativity"
- Kuno, S. "Japanese: A Characteristic OV Language"
- Croft, W. 1990. Typology and Universals.
- Language
- Dryer, M. "The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations" 68.81-138 (1992)
- Dixon, R. "Ergativity" 55 (1979)
- Maxwell, D. "Strategies of Relativization and NP Accessibility" 55.352-71 (1979)
- Smith, D. "Mirror Images in Japanese and English" 54 (1978)
- Greenberg, J. (ed.) 1963. Universals of Language.
- "Some Universals of Language"
- Shopen, T. (ed.) 1985. Language Typology and Syntactic Description
- Keenan, E. "Relative Clauses"
- Mallinson & Blake. 1981. Language Typology.
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