The seminar offers an introduction to Linguistic Typology. After having learnt the foundations of the discipline, we will study classic topics from Linguistic Typology (possession, relative clauses, definiteness, word order, gender, interrogative sentence) with actual examples taken from modern and ancient European languages. Course attendants will learn that European languages are more exotic than our common, Eurocentric linguistic perspective would lead to think; European languages share particular features of which some are unique among the languages of the world: relative clauses with inflected markers e.g. who vs. whom, definite vs. indefinite articles e.g. the vs. a(n), while lacking others such as the distinction between alienable and inalienable adnominal possession and an inclusive/exclusive opposition in first person pronouns.
- DozentIn: Luigi Talamo