Freie Universität Berlin

Dear all,

thank you for participating in the last live session of our seminar in 2020. Phew… The presentation can be found, as every week, in the folder very practically called Presentations. In preparation for the next session, please do the following:

1. Read the following text:
   • There’s no new text, but perhaps re-read Middeke, Kirsten (2019) Syntax for our next session.
     
2. Watch the following videos on syntax:
   • Syntax III: Semantic roles & valency
   • Syntax IV: Constructions
3. Have a look at the sheet with your new homework tasks.
   • You can find it also on Blackboard in the Course material/Homework folder.
4. If you feel like it, fill out this feedback form.

As always – if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at any time. I will regularly check the forums on Blackboard as well as my emails.

Enjoy the winter break, stay safe & stay healthy!

Merry wishes,

Martin

Dear all,
There is going to be an exam question this weekend, due Monday as usual. After that:

To prepare for week 8, please

1. finish reading the text on Syntax
2. watch these two videos
   • Syntax III
   • Syntax IV
3. and do the homework in the Dropbox.

The discussion board will, of course, remain open over Christmas and New Year’s…
See you next year!

Quicklinks:

Webex Room: weekly live seminars Mo. 16:00–18:00
Schedule: weekly readings, videos and homework
Course Bibliography

Next Homework

Next Videos:

• Syntax III: Semantic roles & valency
• Syntax IV: Constructions

Updates

Note that there is going to be another transfer task starting from Friday this week. I have uploaded homework already. I’ll update the rest as soon as everything is ready for next year.

Have a great Christmas, stay healthy and rutscht gut rein!

See you in 2021!

Quicklinks:

Webex Room: weekly live seminars Mo. 16:00–18:00
Schedule: weekly readings, videos and homework
Course Bibliography

Next Homework

Next Videos:
Syntax I Video I
Syntax I Video II

Reading for Syntax I

Updates

The regular updates are here. 🙂 Note that the text is uploaded here this time, see link above.

I showed the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) on Monday, which is possibly the best resource for etymology, meaning, use, and grammatical information about English words, phrases, and morphemes. It also makes extensive use of linguistic terminology, as opposed to your every-day-normal dictionary. Make yourself familiar with it. It should become a staple for you when you do research for your own personal curiosity, study, and later term papers.

You can access the online interface while connected to the FU-VPN, the same you used for the text book on Primo: More information here: https://www.zedat.fu-berlin.de/VPN

Bonus

As promised, here is a fun video on irregular and regular verb inflection attempting to outline why and how English is losing its old “strong” verbs:

How some words get forgotted

Definitely also check out the Video on Zipf’s Law mentioned in the video for some mind-blowing stuff. 🙂

Dear all,

To prepare for week 7, please

1. read this introductiory chapter on syntax (unpublished) up to page 23
2. watch these two videos
   • Syntax I: Phrase structure and word classes
   • Syntax II: Clause structure and syntactic relations and
3. do the homework in the Dropbox.

There will be breakout sessions from 10:15 to 10:45, please be on time. We’ll meet all together at 10:45.