EALL410/510 Japanese/Korean Syntax

This new and innovative course sets out to analyze, compare and contrast the major syntactic structures of Japanese and Korean.

It is well known that “Japanese and Korean display remarkable structural similarities in morpho-syntax” (Yeon 2008). Despite this, attempts to directly compare the syntactic structure of the two languages have been relatively scarce, both in research and teaching. This has created a disconnect at times between research on the two languages, which often approach the same (or similar) phenomena from quite different standpoints.

This course aims to bridge the gap between the syntactic study of Japanese and Korean by analyzing the two languages systematically according to a number of important topic areas. These topics will include particles, tense and aspect, modality, honorifics, passives, benefactive constructions, conditionals, relative clauses and nominalization. With the focus on functional syntax and how these constructions are used in authentic data, students will come to appreciate important similarities and differences between the two languages.

Basic knowledge of Japanese OR Korean (equivalent to at least completion of 103) is assumed.