L.008.32160 Exploring the power of verbs

Instructors: Nina Reshöft

Event type: Proseminar

Org-unit: Anglistik/Amerikanistik

Displayed in timetable as:

Hours per week: 2

Language of instruction: German

Min. | Max. participants: - | 25

Comment:
Verbs, “they're the proudest – adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs” (Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass). Verbs are powerful parts of speech which hold the sentence together. In the first part of the course, you will learn about experimental and corpus-based approaches to explore the lexical semantics of verbs (e.g. climb vs. clamber), verb classes such as verbs of emotion (e.g. love, dislike, envy) or verbs of killing (e.g. kill, murder, assassinate), and explore how verb meaning can be studied in relation to other parts of the sentence (e.g. The wimbush glipped the rolkin). We will draw on various kinds of corpus data such as car accident reports and cooking recipes as well as experimental data (e.g. goodness-of-example ratings, word association tasks). In the second part, you will develop your own research project, collect and analyze linguistic data and prepare the presentation of your results. At the end of the semester, there will be a conference at which all participants must present the results of their own project. Participation on that day is obligatory. A list of readings, the course schedule, and more information about the requirements will be announced at the beginning of the semester.