Course Number:

Credit Hours:

3

Course Title:

Syntax

Course Description:

Explores how speakers of a language know a remarkable range of subtle facts about their language, facts that they were never explicitly taught. For instance, in the sentence, “Betty talked to Wilma about herself,” herself is ambiguous (it can be Betty or Wilma). But in “Betty expected Wilma to talk about herself,” herself can refer only to Wilma. Why should this be? The difference comes from the subtle rules that underlie every speaker’s ability to speak and understand their native language. Examines just what these rules look like, and how we come to know them. Through weekly readings and problem sets, students begin to map out their own “mental grammar,” the system that forms their unconscious knowledge of language.