GENERAL LINGUISTICS

The course aims at providing the student with the basic methodological tools for linguistic analysis and crosslinguistic comparison, by developing the ability of reflecting on the phonological, morphological and syntactic properties of one's mother tongue.

The main educational goal of the course is to provide students with the basic tools for linguistic analysis and crosslinguistic comparison. The course is meant as an introduction to the formal analysis of language through the conscious reflection on the grammatical properties of one's mother tongue, with particular reference to the phonological, morphological and syntactic modules of grammar.

No pre-requisite is required.

Universal grammar: innatism and language acquisition; the faculty of language and the principles-parameters theory.
The articulation of the sounds of Italian.
Phone, phoneme and allophone.
The distinctive features and the supersegmental features.
The main phonological phenomena.
The internal structure of the syllable.
Morpheme and allomorph, types of morphemes.
The morphological processes of composition and derivation.
Semantic properties and restrictions on the word-formation rules.
The notion of constituent and the constituency tests.
The X-bar theory and the internal structure of phrases.
The thematic theory and the notion of thematic role.
The structure of the main clause and of the subordinate clause.

Cecchetto, C., "Introduzione alla sintassi", LED - Milano, 2002, chapters 1,2,3.
Graffi, G., Scalise, S., "Le lingue e il linguaggio - Introduzione alla linguistica" Terza edizione, Il Mulino - Bologna, 2013, chapters 1,2,4,5,7,9,11.

The checking of the learning results will be performed through the administration of a written test lasting 90 minutes. The student will be required to provide, among else, the phonetic and phonological transcription of some Italian words, the morphological composition of some complex Italian words, the phrase structure of some Italian sentences.

Traditional classes with in person attendance.

Italian

written