UC Davis Linguistics Differences or Similarities in Morphology & Syntax Discussion

I’m working on a Linguistics writing question and need a sample draft to help me learn.

The video above presents examples of some basic Mandarin sentences, with translations into English. Use the examples and the information in the above video to talk about differences and similarities between the morphology and syntax of Mandarin and English. Write between 200-250 words.

INSTRUCTIONS – PLEASE READ CAREFULLY. IF YOU JUST TRY TO GOOGLE THE ANSWERS YOU WILL END UP WITH A BAD GRADE.

• Make sure you use terms covered in class. This is basically the purpose of this assignment: to see if students can recognize the concepts we have covered in the Modules on Syntax and Morphology, when presented in a real-life situation.
• Do not use any other resources. Only talk about the differences that arise from the examples presented in the video, as the point is to see if you can interpret a specific dataset (rather than googling information) Any examples not from the video will be ignored when grading.
• Do not waste space. You are being asked to write very little (200 words). Zero of these words should be pointless boilerplate text. If your assignment contains filler such as “Mandarin is a language spoken in China. Mandarin has a large number of native speakers….”, this will not count towards your grade. For example, a response that is 50% pointless filler may receive a grade of 50%.

Below are some things to talk about. You don’t have to answer any of these necessarily, they are just some ideas:

– what is Mandarin word order?
– how does Mandarin mark grammatical roles?
– what is Mandarin morphology like?
– is there any evidence of derivation or inflection?
– how does mandarin indicate past, present and future?
– are there any differences between how English and Mandarin order elements of a phrase or sentence?