Course Syllabus

English 436/Linguistics 402: The Structure of English
Syllabus #1513
5 credits

Dr. Anne Lobeck
Anne.Lobeck@wwu.edu
Humanities 359, 650-3249

ENGLISH MAJOR/MINOR CREDITS:

WWU English majors/minors may apply up to 10 credits earned through distance learning to their major/minor course of study. Contact the English Department for guidelines.

DEPARTMENT INFORMATION:

• Department Information
• Department Mission, Goals, and Objectives
• Course Description
  
  

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course is designed to make you love something you think you hate: grammar. In fact, as you progress through the course you will likely find that studying grammar is not only less terrifying that you thought, but in fact, that it is actually rather interesting, and sometimes, a lot of the time, even fun. Where did your grammar anxiety come from? Very likely from learning that grammar is all about boring rules such as “Don’t use double negatives;” Never start a sentence with because;” It’s ‘John and I, not ‘John and me,’ etc. You’ve learned that you need to speak and write ‘correctly’ to get ahead, and you probably all have your own grammar ‘pet peeves’ that make you really mad, and you all have probably corrected someone’s grammar and been corrected yourself a time or two. That would make anyone hate grammar, (unless of course you are one of those people who really enjoys correcting someone else…).

     So, if we won’t be sitting around correcting each other and learning ‘proper grammar’ in this class, what will we be doing? Learning English grammar? You already know it, even though you may not necessarily be able to explain what you know. That’s where I come in; my aim is to help you discover, by exploring your own intuitive knowledge of English, how this fascinating and complex and ever changing language works. You will also, by investigating your linguistic intuitions in some depth, gain a set of valuable tools that will allow you to analyze language in general, and English in particular, in any representation.

     Along with the more technical aspects of grammatical analysis, we will also explore how linguistic facts intersect (or don’t) with social attitudes about language and grammar. More simply, there are many thorny questions that arise when we find that in terms of grammatical structure, all language varieties are created equal. This takes the wind out of the sails of those who claim that one way of speaking is more desirable than another, or that some dialect is ‘sloppy’ or ‘slang,’ but another is ‘correct’ and ‘proper.’ Such judgments are social, not linguistic, and tell us a lot about what we think of each other, as well as about how we construct our own identity. Some questions we will consider:

• How do social attitudes about language play out in school?
• What is 'standard' English, and what is considered 'non-standard' and why? Who decides?
• Where did our ideas about 'correct' and 'incorrect' grammar come from?
• How do language attitudes influence our perceptions of speakers of certain varieties of English?
• How can we use our knowledge of language to recognize and challenge linguistic discrimination?
  
  

COURSE OBJECTIVES

By the end of the course you will be able to use tools of linguistic inquiry to: 

• Identify syntactic categories, phrases, and clauses
• Distinguish between subordination and coordination
• Identify a main clause and other material that modifies it

You will also be able to critically analyze: 

• language change and variation
• differences between prescriptive versus descriptive grammatical rules
• social sources of linguistic discrimination and language ideologies
  
  

This course will help you appreciate and have some tools to navigate multilingualism in the classroom (should you be taking this course as an Education requirement), but outside the classroom as well; we are all members of one or more language communities, and a deeper understanding of language is valuable to all of us, in particular to recognize and challenge discrimination and support diversity. 

You of course have longer than 10 weeks to complete this course, and the timeline is up to you. I do recommend, however, that you turn in assignments and get feedback before going on; don’t turn in more than 2 at a time. I try to grade them within a week. Below I provide a suggested timeline for completing the course in 10 weeks if you wish to:

Suggested Class Schedule for Completion in 10 Weeks

Week 1  Module 1: Introduction- What is Grammar? Chapter 1

Week 2: Module 2: Nouns and Noun Phrases. Chapters 2-3

Weeks 3-4:  Module 3:  Verbs & Verb Phrases. Chapters 4-5. Quiz 1

Weeks 5-6: Module 4: Adjectives, Adverbs, Prepositions. Chapters 7, 8, 9

Weeks 7-8: Module 5: Independent, Coordinate, and Subordinate Clauses. Chapter 10. Quiz 2

Weeks 9-10: Module 6:  More on Complementation and Modification. Chapter 11. Final Exam  

TEXT:

Navigating English Grammar: A Guide to Analyzing Real Language. Anne Lobeck and Kristin Denham. Wiley-Blackwell, 2014

EVALUATION: (NOTE: ALL ASSIGNMENTS ARE UPLOADED TO CANVAS, AND EXAMS ARE ONLINE)

Exams: There are 3 exams, each of which is comprehensive. All exams are online. Each exam is unlocked after you have completed the required modules.

• Exam 1: available after you have completed Modules 1-3 (20%)
• Exam 2: after Modules 4-5 (20%)
• Final Exam: after Module 6 (35%)

Homework assignments:  There are 2-3 homework assignments per Module. Homework assignments are worth 25% of your grade, and each is uploaded to Canvas (instructions are in Modules). Assignments are graded as follows:

            Satisfactory: complete, and you gave it your best (2 points)

            Unsatisfactory: incomplete, lack of effort (0-1 point)

The assignments are designed to guide you to explore and practice tools of linguistic analysis. I am therefore not looking for you to be “right” or “ correct.” (As you’ll find, exploring grammatical structure is based on analysis and hypothesis formation, so how you do the analysis is more important than coming up with a “correct” answer.) I do expect assignments to be complete, well organized and clear, and for a good grade you must provide me with clear evidence of effort to try and tackle all the questions and exercises.

NOTE: Some assignments require you to draw tree diagrams. Please feel free to draw these by hand, or using any kind of program that works for you. You may scan your tree diagrams and upload along with the rest of your assignment. PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT I CAN READ THEM. They must be dark enough and neat enough to show up on Canvas. 

If you are really struggling with an assignment, please email me before sending it, so that we can discuss and resolve any confusion before you are graded on it.