General Linguistics and Comparative Philology

This subject consists of three parts, of which you choose two: Part 1: the linguistic description of Latin or Greek (you choose one), especially the application to the classical languages of modern descriptive insights and techniques. Topics will include: grammatical categories (such as tense, aspect, voice, mood); ordering of elements within a phrase or sentence; structures of complex sentences; pragmatic and sociolinguistic functions of linguistic variables such as, for example, the different ways of expressing commands. University teaching: six 2-hour classes in each language.

Part 2: modern linguistic theory in more general terms, including topics in contemporary phonological and grammatical theory. University teaching: four 2-hour classes. Note that courses of lectures in General Linguistics are also offered by the Subfaculty of Linguistics.

Part 3: the reconstruction of Indo-European. This course deals with problems affecting parts of the sound-system and the grammar (especially the verb) of the parent language and their reflections in the (pre-) history of Latin and Greek. Note: Part 3 follows on from the Mods special subject in Comparative Philology. You may take it up without having done the subject in Mods, but you will then have some ground to make up. University teaching: eight two-hour classes.

Preliminary reading: for Part 1 - Latin: H. Pinkster, Latin Syntax and Semantics (London 1990); - Greek: A. Rijksbaron, The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction (3rd edn, Amsterdam 2002); for Part 2: Jean Aitchison, Linguistics (new edn; Teach Yourself series, London 2003); for Part 3: James Clackson, Indo-European Linguistics. An Introduction (Cambridge 2007).