Linguistics 590STA - Morphology

What is a word? Do the things we put spaces around when we write correspond to anything in our mental grammars? How does morphology relate to phonology, and to other areas of grammar, such as syntax and semantics? To what extent do the principles governing the structures and forms of words need to be boxed off from other areas of grammar, and to what extent are they symptomatic of deeper principles which hold of the language faculty as a whole? This course aims to answer these and other questions by examining morphological phenomena from across the world?s languages, including English and languages which are (at least superficially) very different from it. In particular, the goal of this course is to introduce students to contemporary morphological theory. We will focus in particular on current models of morphology, analytical tools for analyzing morphological generalizations, and contentious issues in the literature.