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2009 Course Handbook

LING319: Grammar and Semantics: Systemic Organisation

Language is a network of choices available to speakers. Those choices arise in specific cultural contexts, and the choices themselves are most usefully pictured as grouped into interrelated systems (choices that depend on each other more than they depend on choices elsewhere across the network).

The course elaborates the major systems of meaning making that have emerged in English grammar; furthermore, it relates these major systems to choices at the strata above grammar - for example, logical argument at the semantics, and different fields and actions at context.

The practical outcomes of the course include: the drawing and evaluation of linguistic networks; the application of networks to naturally occurring discourse; and the development of databases and resources for being explicit about the 'meaning potential' of interactants. The issues, therefore, relate to fields as diverse as grammar, aesthetics, cultural studies, cognitive science and speech pathology.

Credit Points:4
Contact Hours:3
When Offered: D2 - Day; Offered in the second half-year
Staff Contact: Associate Professor David Butt
Prerequisites:

LING211

Corequisites:

NCCWs:

LING311

Unit Designations: Science
Assessed As: Graded
Offered By:

Department of Linguistics

Timetable Information

For unit timetable information please visit the Timetables@Macquarie Website.

Recent Updates

17 Oct 2008 - EDUC80P

Program title amended