2020-21 Academic Catalog

Languages vary in what kind of information is morphologically expressed. The form words take is, in part, governed by complex systems called "case" and "agreement." In general, case refers to forms of nouns, and agreement refers to forms of verbs. We go beyond familiar case patterns in which subjects are Nominative and objects are Accusative and familiar agreement patterns in which verbs display the person, gender, and/or number of subjects. We investigate the morphological patterns in at least a dozen (probably more!) languages with the goals of arriving at both cross-linguistic generalizations and language-particular nuances. No familiarity with languages other than English is required. Prerequisite: 100-level linguistics course