Courses held at the University of Bremen from 1999 until 2002
(short descriptions)

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Systemic-functional grammar is an approach to grammar that provides tools for investigating why texts are as they are. Grammatical choices reflect both the social context in which text is produced and the communicative goals of the writer or speaker. These two `functions´ of language can be used to motivate all grammatical constructions. The seminar will therefore provide a systematic map of the grammar of English that emphasizes the possible communicative choices that English provides for its speakers. This will be followed by a detailed look at selected areas of the grammar and their application to text analyses. Extensive practice will be given in interpreting the results of the grammatical analyses to suggest additional meanings for the texts analysed.

To be effective, any use of language has to be appropriate for its context. But how does language show its appropriateness? What is it about the particular selections of grammatical structures, words, meanings and so on that go together with some contexts rather than others? The study of the relationship between language and context is called register theory. In this course register theory will be introduced and explored concretely in one particular domain: the use of the English language either to persuade people to smoke or not to smoke. The former consists of language from tobacco advertising, the latter from health information professionals. In both cases we will see how the particular forms of language employed resonate with particular kinds of assumptions about the social context of the communication. And these assumptions contribute substantially to the success, or otherwise, of the texts produced. Although the texts we examine in the course are quite specific, the methods of analysis practiced are quite general and so can form a basis for approaching other kinds of texts subsequently.

Successful texts are not simple collections of sentences: they have internal structures of various kinds that are essential to our understanding and appreciation of their effectiveness. This seminar provides an overview of the various kinds of text structure that have been proposed in linguistics and text linguistics. Substantial practice in using the approaches to text analysis introduced in the course will be given for a wide variety of diverse text types, including many ‘everyday’ texts. After a general introduction to the problems of treating texts, the seminar will focus mainly on text ‘macro-structures’, genre structures, and thematic progression---all of which are essential to both a general and particular understanding of how any particular English text `works´.

This seminar explores how some of the techniques and theories that have been developed for studying texts can be extended and applied to collections of texts, graphics, pictures, diagrams, headlines, headings, marginnotes and footnotes that are presented together as `pages´ of information. Both the material presented and the visual layout selected contribute to the total `communicative meaning´ that is perceived by a reader. This meaning can be explored using techniques derived from linguistics. The course will introduce some of the relevant techniques and explore analyses of a variety of `texts´ that include both textual and graphical aspects. It is sometimes claimed nowadays that communication is moving away from `text´ and becoming more `visual´: we will also explore some of the implications that this claim has when we deal with texts.

The last 20 years has been an explosive time for linguistics with more linguistic 'theories' being proposed from more linguists than at any time in the past. And 90% of these theories are concerned with descriptions of English grammar! Two common responses to this multitude are either to distance oneself from it and to work within broadly descriptive or 'theoretically neutral' frameworks, or to specialize, so that one is an expert on one particular framework. In this course we take neither path: we instead survey the range of approaches to linguistics that have defined the 'mainstream' over this period to see how and why things have developed as they have. Considering the variety of different approaches to grammar that have been proposed puts us in a better position to see just what grammar is, what kinds of structures it uses, and the problems that arise when we try to describe those structures. It also leaves us more informed about linguistics as a discipline.

The course will consist of a series of lectures, where each week or two a particular view of grammar will be introduced and contrasted with what has gone before, showing simply (a) how each one differs from the others and (b) that each one is designed to answer particular sorts of questions. We will start with the basic notions of transformational grammar as introduced by Chomsky and raise the question as to just why this was considered important enough to come to define what is now considered 'mainstream' linguistics. We will then go through a selection of the various offshoots of basic transformational grammar, dealing with these as particular attempts to overcome particular problems. We will end with the most modern approaches to grammar that claim to belong (and define) the mainstream: Chomsky's minimalist program and Pollard and Sag's Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG)---two theories indispensable for modern linguistic thought. Along the way we will see how particular stumbling blocks or problem areas have come to shape substantial areas of the linguistic literature. We will concentrate particularly on making clear why some of the questions linguists were asking were being asked: just what were they trying to get at? This is the first important step to being able to see through the often bewildering 'pseudo-scientificese' used by linguists in the mainstream tradition, which we will attempt, as much as possible, to demystify.

Course Outline and topics:

• Topic 1 The 'Chomsky revolution': what was the big deal?
• Topic 2 So where did semantics go?
• Topic 3 First cracks: extended standard theory ((R)EST) and generative semantics...
• Topic 4 What happened to Subjects and Objects? Grammatical relations and relational grammar (RG)
• Topic 5 Haven't I seen you before? The rise of X-bar syntax and the lexicon
• Topic 6 Let's do this differently 1: are you sure we need transformations??! Generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG)
• Topic 7 Let's do this differently 2: I want syntax and functions!! Lexical-Functional grammar (LFG)
• Topic 8 Let's do this differently 3: tree-adjoining grammar (TAG)
• Topic 9 Re-unification: can we get this all together?....
• Topic 10 Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG)
• Topic 11 Standard problems 1: island constraints....
• Topic 12 Standard problems 2: "who did you think Mary believed John to have told Peter to ask ?" (unbounded dependencies)
• Topic 13 Whither Chomsky? From Government and Binding theory to minimalism Course assessment will be by examination.

Computers provide increasingly useful tools for the study, management, and creation of texts. In this seminar we explore their contributions and limits in the areas of corpus linguistics, machine translation, terminology, symbolic authoring, automatic natural language generation, automatic natural language analysis, and intelligent tutoring systems for second language learning. Wherever possible we will use examples of computer tools `hands-on´ in the computer lab to get a feel for what is on offer. Participation in the seminar will give a detailed overview of what can currently be done with the computer when studying language and why.

Texts consists of parts that are related to one another: for example, one part may elaborate on another, or one part may provide a solution to a problem presented in another, or may contrast with that part, or provide evidence for it, etc. Understanding these relations is an essential part of understanding any text: if the relationships have not been correctly recognized, then the text can remain mysterious or seem ill-structured. Two particularly powerful approaches to relational structure will be introduced in detail: `rhetorical structure theory´ and `conjunctive relations´. A variety of texts will be analyzed from both perspectives. Participants in the course will therefore gain experience in exploring text structure analytically and will see how detailed text analysis can provide a clearer insight into the meanings and relationships expressed in a text. Analyses will also be considered contrastively, asking to what extent the understanding of text structure achieved may help or hinder translation between English and German.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language and provides techniques, tools, and concepts that allow us to explore closely how language `works´. The Grundkurs presents linguistics as a set of tools for answering questions about language, and particularly about how language constructs texts. Students will be given the tools to follow and explore meaning (`SEMANTICS´) whenever it is made and wherever it is placed by language---be it in the structure of sentences (`SYNTAX´, `GRAMMAR´), hidden inside words (`MORPHOLOGY´), in the relationships between words (`COHESION´, `LEXICOLOGY´), in sound (`PHONOLOGY´) or in larger patterns of text and discourse (`TEXT LINGUISTICS´, `PRAGMATICS´). We will see that the places where meanings hide, as well as the meanings themselves, vary across languages and cultures (`CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS´) and change over time (`HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS´, `LANGUAGE ACQUISITION´). Analytically, students will examine texts and the sentences that make up texts to see how they combine to create meaning; theoretically, students will be made familiar with the concepts, frameworks, methods, and terminologies that go to make up modern linguistics.

If a sequence of sentences in a language are perceived as a text, then there are certain linguistic features of the sentences that support this interpretation. Cohesion seeks to uncover what those linguistic features are and to provide tools for analyzing their occurrence. Texts can therefore be ranked according to how effectively they are structured, that is, how `cohesive´ they are. The standard work on cohesion is Halliday and Hasan's (1976) `Cohesion in English´, an essential text for understanding the linguistic resources of textuality in English. The seminar will introduce the approach of Halliday and Hasan and use it to study the cohesive structures of a variety of natural texts. We will also then review more recent developments in cohesion, including particularly Hasan's notion of `cohesive harmony´ and Martin's approach to lexical cohesion.

The use of tenses in English is a complex area that is made even more complicated by the superficial similarity that exists between tenses in English and tenses in German. Tenses like the perfect in English "has eaten" and in German "hat gegessen" seem to be constructed in the same way, inviting mistakes in usage. The tense systems of the two languages are grammatically virtually identical, but semantically and pragmatically very different, and so present something of a challenge to translation, teaching, understanding, and just getting on with creating English texts where time plays a role. In this seminar we will carry out a text-based investigation of the differences in tense usage in English and German. We will look at texts, including translations, and locate the places where tense and time information is given. We will then try and work out just what the tenses are doing in their particular contexts of use. The course should be of benefit to anyone who has doubts about their grasp of English tenses, but will also use the study of tenses as an exercise in linguistic analysis. We will need to gather a collection of texts together (a corpus) and be able to reliably recognise and describe the different kinds of tenses that appear (grammatical analysis). We will then need to interpret the tenses in context, asking what the writer of the texts were wanting to communicate by their particular tense selections (functional analysis). Along the way we will also take a look at the major proposals for the meanings of tense selections, which we will then check against our own analyses of tense occurrences from our corpus (linguistic theory application and revision). The course will be largely participation-driven: students will need to gather their own texts for analysis and locate examples of both simple and complicated tense usages; these will be discussed in class. 'Scheine' will be awarded on the basis of this participation combined with a final written analysis of the tense examples found in each student's part of the collected corpus of texts.

In this course participants will be given a thorough grounding in a particular area of functional grammar: transitivity. Transitivity is the part of grammar that encodes the speaker or writer's view of reality-literally the 'who did what' part of grammar. We will explore a wide range of English texts in order to practice recognising the basic types of transitivity patterns in English. The main emphasis will be on doing, so that all successful course participants will become proficient in analysing texts according to their transitivity. We will also address the important question of the meaning of transitivity choices. Just because a writer represents some event as an action does not mean that it was an action ('the temperature fell'), nor if a writer represents some event as a kind of mental perception does it mean that there is some mental perception involved ('the third day saw them at the summit'): the transitivity system is much more flexible. Crucially, these choices are rarely unique, one-off, isolated choices but instead go together to help make a text work as a text. Particular meanings are made prominent, others are placed in the background. Recognising transitivity patterns in texts is the first important step to being able to decode these hidden meanings. Once they have been made visible, then texts become clearer in their ideological and other orientations and it is easier to start explaining why some choices might be 'better' than others. Participation in the course will require regular attendance in order to practice and discuss many examples taken from texts. Course assessment will be by examination.

WiSe00/01

Automatic Text Generation: a new tool for learning about how texts work (or don't!)

When we try and make absolutely explicit how texts in some language work, that is, what differentiates a text from a collection of random sentences thrown together, we run into all the problems of text linguistics, stylistics, pragmatics, and many more: just what is it that the sentences of texts have that random collections of sentences don't? One of the more recent tools to come our way in the attempt to understand texts is the field of 'Automatic Text Generation'. Here the goal is to make a computer program produce natural sounding texts in some language, starting from some idea of what is to be communicated and some particular communicative intentions. In order to make such a program, we need to have explicit models of how texts work, how grammars work, and how these all fit together. Being explicit with a computer is the most trying test of explicitness that can be imagined: the computer is the most stupid of possible pupils! In this course we explore possible roles of Automatic Text Generation in exploring how texts work. If we have a 'bad theory' of how texts work, then the texts that the computer produces are similarly 'bad': it is much easier to recognise when a text is bad than when a theory or an idea is bad, and this is why trying to produce Automatic Text Generation programs is a useful tool for exploring language. We will work both theoretically and practically. After a brief introduction to the major ideas and previous attempts to make computers generate texts-texts ranging from weather reports to stories-we will begin looking at one particular computer program for generating texts in depth. We will see what changes in the texts produced when we change ideas about how texts work. And we will explore ways of using such computer programs in teaching and other application areas. No previous knowledge of computers or text linguistics will be assumed: and so the course can also serve as a rather different introduction to both areas.

WiSe00/01

The Language of the News Media

The 'news media' is a pervasive phenomenon; one which plays a role of increasing importance in how people view the world and their place in it: TV, newspapers, radio, the web are all places where 'news' is presented. News is often meant to be objective, 'fact'-oriented-but is it? And how can we tell? In this course, we look at the language that is used in presentations of news as one way into looking at these questions. If news has been presented linguistically in some particular way, then that is a choice: any newstory can be presented in many different ways and each particular choice that is made has to be seen against the background of those other possible choices. When there is choice, there is meaning; and these meanings can be individual, ideological, stylistic, and so on. This course will introduce some basic linguistic tools for analysing texts and for trying to make clear some of the ideological assumptions that stand behind texts. We will then apply these tools to a range of texts drawn (mostly) from the British news media. Participants in the course will be expected to select a collection of such texts themselves for use in the seminar. These will be dissected and discussed in class and later in a written-up paper.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language and provides techniques, tools, and concepts that allow us to explore closely how language `works´. The Grundkurs presents linguistics as a set of tools for answering questions about language, and particularly about how language constructs texts. Students will be given the tools to follow and explore meaning (`SEMANTICS´) whenever it is made and wherever it is placed by language---be it in the structure of sentences (`SYNTAX´, `GRAMMAR´), hidden inside words (`MORPHOLOGY´), in the relationships between words (`COHESION´, `LEXICOLOGY´), in sound (`PHONOLOGY´) or in larger patterns of text and discourse (`TEXT LINGUISTICS´, `PRAGMATICS´). We will see that the places where meanings hide, as well as the meanings themselves, vary across languages and cultures (`CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS´) and change over time (`HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS´, `LANGUAGE ACQUISITION´). Analytically, students will examine texts and the sentences that make up texts to see how they combine to create meaning; theoretically, students will be made familiar with the concepts, frameworks, methods, and terminologies that go to make up modern linguistics.

'Appraisal' refers to a growing area of linguistic interest: the study of the ways in which writers and speakers subtly place their subjects into positive or negative roles and how they attempt to disguise or make explicit their own roles, positions, and beliefs. The linguistic means used to signal appraisal range across lexis (word selection: do you live in a house, a hovel, or a mansion?), grammar ('it did happen', 'it might have happened', 'it could possibly have been the case that it happened'), semantic patterns ('I think it happened'), and many others. The course will introduce some basic linguistic tools for recognising when these things are being done in texts, and will provide detailed analysis practice for making appraisal explicit. We will then apply this to a range of texts where appraisal is being done to see what kind of patterns of appraisal writers employ. This 'interpersonal' area of meaning is usually the one that travels most badly when moving between languages and between cultures, and so is often more difficult to learn and to teach. As a consequence, there are many cases of 'wrong' or 'inappropriate' appraisals in the language of non-native speakers and we will use our appraisal analyses to see if we can identify such cases and improve on them. Course assessment will be by examination; several non-assessed 'tests' will be given during the course to ensure that participants are 'on track'.

In this course, we examine several basic accounts of text structure: particularly rhetorical structure theory (RST) for written texts, exchange structure theory for dialogues, and thematic progression for both written and spoken texts. We will practise using these linguistic approaches for analysing a variety of English texts. We will then ask the following question: what kinds of text structures do we find in texts that come from different situations? Can we find links between particular kinds of situations and particular kinds of text structures? The basic variation of language according to situation is often called register and this is commonly applied to selections of words and grammatical patterns (style): in this course we will see to what extent this variation also applies to text structure. In the first half of the course we will practice the basic analyses of text structures; in the second half, we will then apply this to texts to see how different situations favour different text structures. The kinds of texts examined will include: news reports, plays, technical scientific texts, literary criticism texts, editorials, casual conversation and novels/short stories involving dialogue. Course assessment will be by a presentation in class showing some contrasting text structures followed by a written-up discussion.

In this course we examine some areas of English and German grammar and explore how they are similar and different. The basic model adopted will be a functional one of English: we will start from basic areas of English grammar and ask the question of how similar functions are achieved in German and whether there are differences in functions. This will focus attention on areas of potential difficulty in understanding English as a German-speaker or in understanding German as an English-speaker. Special attention will be given to areas of grammar that are almost the same but diverge in some respect, and to areas that are completely different: both cases can be expected to lead to learning problems, teaching problems, translation problems and comprehension/production problems. We will explore whether this is in fact the case. During the course participants will work in small groups and select and develop small areas of grammar drawing on both English and German texts, corpora, standard usage guides, etc. Particular techniques for showing differences and similarities in language function will be introduced and practised. Successful participants will gain a detailed understanding of how to describe language functionally and practice in applying this knowledge. Course assessment will be by writing-up an area of grammar developed in the course in full, with examples drawn from real texts, and a discussion of implications for learning, teaching, translation, and so on.

Linguistics is the systematic study of language. It provides tools,techniques and concepts that allow us to examine very closely howlanguage 'works'--that is, whatever it is that language is doing forus, both individually and societally. The Grundkurs presentslinguistics as a set of tools for exploring language and,particularly, for exploring texts (written, spoken, signed, visual andtheir combinations). The language patterns that allow texts to buildup sophisticated meanings are themselves very complex, and we needtheoretical and practical tools to make them visible. So participantsin the course are introduced to the basic tools and questions oflinguistics so as to explore meaning ('SEMANTICS') whenever it is madeand wherever it is being hidden in all texts that we encounter.

Meanings hide in many places. They are placed inside the structure ofsentences ('SYNTAX', 'GRAMMAR'), inside words ('MORPHOLOGY'), in therelationships between words ('COHESION', 'LEXICOGRAPHY'), in sound('PHONOLOGY'), or in larger patterns of text and discourse ('TEXTLINGUISTICS', 'PRAGMATICS', 'RHETORIC'). What is more, the placeswhere meanings hide, as well as the meanings themselves, vary acrosslanguage and cultures ('CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS'), across socialgroups ('SOCIO-LINGUISTICS') and change over time ('HISTORICALLINGUISTICS', 'LANGUAGE ACQUISITION/DEVELOPMENT'). One way of lookingat linguistics is to see it as a way of showing how each text is bothunique in terms of its use of these patterns and, at the same time,representative of broader classes of text types. Much of the meaningof a text comes from this latter background against which it must be measured.

The Grundkurs sets the scene for the systematic study of theindividuality and representativeness of texts. It provides a firstoverview of the techniques offered by modern linguistics for showingtexts' linguistic patterning. Further courses in the Grundstudiumthen take us deeper so that, by Hauptstudium, we can apply linguisticmethods to a wide range of interesting and difficult issues of generalrelevance to effective communication and to the intepretation of texts and discourse.

Throughout the course theoretical introductions are mixed withpractical exercises in tutorials. Course assessment is by examination. For further information about the course and how it fits into the overall plan of (applied) linguistics at Bremen: see the webpage http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/ling/gk.htm

An important area of grammatical description that is often overlooked in syntactic accounts focuses on the grammatical patterns that signal how the grammatical units of a text--its sentences, clauses, nominal phrases, verbal phrases, etc.--hang together to make text. When these patterns are properly used, we get well-formed, more or less intelligible texts; when they are abused or used poorly, we usually get texts that are deficient in a number of ways. These deficiencies are often difficult to characterise and to talk about, unless their origins in the breaking of textual `rules' is recognised. This course is an introduction to the primary ways in which English grammar creates text. We will also contrast the patterns of English with those found in other languages, particularly German. The patterns are of two main kinds: structural, predominantly the thematic and information structures expressed in word order, and non-structural, made up of cohesive links across the units of a text. The course will alternate introduction of the linguistic constructs with practice on a wide variety of different kinds of text.

When we try and make absolutely explicit how texts in some language work, that is, what differentiates a text from a collection of random sentences thrown together, we run into all the problems of text linguistics, stylistics, pragmatics, and many more: just what is it that the sentences of texts have that random collections of sentences don't? One of the more recent tools to come our way in the attempt to understand texts is the field of 'Automatic Text Generation' by computer. In this course we introduce and explore Automatic Text Generation both theoretically, examining the development of the field, and practically, with hands-on session in the Lab using and developing the necessary components for creating an Automatic Text Generator. The course will show which modules are necessary, set out the current approaches, and explore particular solutions in depth with practical work. In particular, we will be assessing opportunities for using this new technology in diverse areas, ranging from language teaching to automated weather reports. Course assessment will be awarded for small practical projects and state-of-the-art descriptions. No previous knowledge of computers or text linguistics will be assumed: and so the course can also serve as a rather different introduction to both areas. For further information about this course and how it fits into the overall plan of (applied) linguistics at Bremen: see the webpage http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/ling/ss02/nlg.htm