Romance Linguistics (Master S1/S3 Class)
Basic information
- Credits: 3
- Format: 2 hours weekly
- 2026-2027 instructors: Lisa Brunetti
- 2026-2027 schedule: Thursdays, 14:00-16:00, room 531
- Moodle page
Description
After a brief summary of the historic setting that determined the appearance of Romance languages as a result of the evolution of Latin, and after giving an overview of the main typological characteristics of this language family (word order, negation, auxiliary selection, pronominal forms…), we will make a closer comparative analysis of some constructions and phenomena that are particularly interesting from the point of view of this language family, and from a pragmatic point of view (for instance, syntactic constructions related to certain information-structure properties, such as clefts or dislocations; or syntactically non-canonical sentences expressing non-assertive speech acts, such as in subordinated constructions).
Prerequisites
None.
Knowledge of one or more Romance languages and of basic pragmatic notions may help, but it is not obligatory.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this course, students should be able to:
- Recognize typical traits of the Romance-language family, as well as the main traits of specific Romance languages.
- Describe and compare Romance languages with respect to the phenomena seen in class.
- Present a project to the class on an aspect of the phenomena seen in class.