Course syllabus

Welcome to African Language Structures and Typology!

This course forms a continuation of AF1111 Introduction to Linguistics and African Languages. You will deepen your knowledge of phonology and grammar, taking a typological perspective. Typology is the systematic study and comparison of different aspects of language, such as phonology and morphology, in order to find out what is common in the languages of the world, what is rare, and what (if any) are the limits of human language?

This means that we will focus on African languages and their structures, while comparing them to the languages of the world.

Further information about the course and its set-up can be found in the course guide and in modules, in which you will find all the material and the structure of the course.

Syllabus and reading list 

Schedule Spring Term 2023

Course instructor is Eva-Marie Bloom Ström

Course outline VT 2023

NB! The Zoom link for the lessons is found in the course guide. The chapters from the main book are given below per lesson but there will be other readings as well. Everything will be available through the university library, so make sure that your log-in is working. You do not have to buy any literature. Further details will be published in Modules on the date listed here for each lesson.

Start date 16 January

Lesson 1; Velupillai 1-3

      • introduction
      • how do linguists get their data?
      • the work of the descriptive linguist
      • the work of the typologist

Introduction on Zoom Thursday 19 January at 16.00 NB: New date 25 January 16.00 CET

Lesson 2; Velupillai 4 - 30 January

      • phonetics
      • phonology; vowels and consonants

Zoom Thursday 9 February 16.00

Lesson 3 - 13 February

      • phonology; prosody
      • morphophonology

Zoom Thursday 23 February 16.00

Test 1 open Thursday 23 February 17.00 until Sunday 26 February 17.00

Lesson 4, Velupillai 5-6 - 27 February

      • morphology; kinds of morphological systems
      • morphology; word classes
      • lexicon

Zoom Wednesday 8 March 16.00 NB: New date Monday 13 March 17.00 CET

Lesson 5 - 13 March

      • morphology; inflection
      • morphology; derivation

Zoom Thursday 23 March 16.00

Lesson 6, Velupillai 7 - 27 March

      • morphology; noun class systems and agreement, animacy

Zoom Tuesday 4 April 16.00 NB: New date Thursday 6 April 16.00

Test 2 open Thursday 13 April 17.00 until Sunday 16 April 17.00

Lesson 7, Velupillai 8 - 17 April

      • Verbal categories; tense and aspect.

Zoom Thursday 27 April 16.00 NB: New date Friday 5 May 13.00

Lesson 8, Velupillai 9 - 1 May

      • Simple clauses and valency. Negation

Zoom Thursday 11 May 16.00

Lesson 9, Velupillai 10 - 15 May 

      • Word order
      • Information Structure

Zoom Thursday 25 May 16.00

3-5 June

Exam, the test will be open to take any time starting Saturday 3 June 08.00, with deadline Monday 5 June 23.59

12-14 Aug

Retake exam, the test will be open to take any time starting Saturday 12 August 08.00, with deadline Monday 14 August 23.59