Semester Essay

Essay Question

Write an essay in which you provide an overview of Generative Grammar as an approach to studying the structure of human language.

Scope and Details

Your essay should be between 3000 and 4000 words in length (excluding references). Ensure that you:

• Contextualise the discussion by providing an overview of different perspectives on what language is, focusing especially on formal & cognitive approaches to studying grammar.

• Explain X-bar theory and detail the breakdown of the clause. Make sure that you introduce and discuss the verb phrase internal subject hypothesis (VPISH) and the determiner phrase (DP) hypothesis.

• Discuss question formation, and give due consideration to parameters of variation, e.g. in Afrikaans and IsiXhosa.

Ensure that your essay adheres to the LIN737 Style Guide.

Tips

Use your portfolio work as a springboard for your essay

• Assemble and edit your portfolio work into a rough draft for your essay.

• Use the 'subtopics' listed above as a checklist for your essay's scope.

• Do not simply string all your portfolio work together. Creatively add sections to your essay and restructure your portfolio work in such a way that it fits into the structure of your essay. You may want to group relevant subtopics together in one or more essay sections in a logical way. Make sure that the different sections flow properly into each other to form a cohesive, standalone essay.

• Your portfolio work will have helped you to generate many good examples that you should use to illustrate concepts and ideas in Generative Grammar, and how these concepts and ideas can be applied in languages other than English. Make sure whenever you use examples from your portoflio work in your essay, that you do a thorough job of defining the concepts, explaining the ideas, and helping your reader to see the connection between these concepts and ideas, and the examples that you provide.

Rubrics (essay draft & final essay)

The essay draft and final essay are marked according to rubrics that have the same components. Note however that the components are weighted differently in the final essay than in the essay draft.