Syntax (English), Seminar 26.8.–13.12.2025 (5cr)

Objectives (course unit)

The learning goals for the course involve your acquiring the ability to analyze English sentences, to identify different types of main, complement, and adjunct clauses, and to formulate precise linguistic generalizations about the sentences and constructions that you analyze. This expertise can be applied, not just to standard English, but to regional and social varieties of English, as well as to Finnish and other languages you know, study, teach, and research.

Content (course unit)

This course is an introduction to the description and explanatory modeling of English syntax in a way that will take students far beyond the basics. The focus will be on constituent structure, the hierarchical relationship between sentence constituents, and the reordering processes that permit us to formulate and comprehend a broad range of structures. This will enable students to understand and explain how the syntax of English works and how it contrasts with the syntax of other languages, but ultimately has much in common with the syntax of all languages.