The traditional view of grammar has been that it consists of the basic subdisciplines syntax, morphology, semantics and phonology. Each subdiscipline defines the inventory of elements as well as the regularities (or rules) that combine the elements to form the relevant structures of the given language, i.e. phrases/sentences and words as well as their meaning and sound structure. Since the last decade of the 20th century, the field of morphology (and in particular, word formation) has found itself in the center of a controversy that is centered around the question of whether complex words can be explained by the combinatorial regularities of sentence structure. The newest version of this question would like to allocate complex words and sentences to common schemata called constructions. This seminar will investigate the empirical and theoretical advantages/disadvanteges of the current discussion.
- Course owner: Prof. i. R. Dr. Susan Olsen