Date

Topic

Objectives: Students will..

Assignments

Tuesday, August 28

Introduction

• become familiar with course syllabus, policies, and materials

•become familiar with Blackboard materials

• identify the general branches of linguistics

Write paragraph of introduction on Blackboard discussion board. What languages and dialects do  you speak? In  your paragraph, explain how  your ethnicity and social identify affect your language and style of speaking.

Characteristics of language

Phonetics

•define basic terms of the main branches of linguistics

• list unique characteristics of human language

•identify the phonemes of English

•classify sounds as voice or voiceless

•transcribe English words and sentences in (IPA)

•identify allophones

Trask, Chapter 1, pp. 1-19

Web: The Sounds of American English

Tuesday, September  4

Morphology

•differentiate between derivational and inflectional morphology

•identify morphemes in English

•solve a simple morphology problem

Syntax

•apply the phrase structure rules

•identify parts of speech

Trask, Chapter 2

Tuesday,  September 11

Psycholinguistics

•identify structural and lexical ambiguities

•group ambiguities according to structure

General description of psycholinguistics: http://cognet.mit.edu/library/erefs/mitecs/clark.html

Coursepack: "In search of gender neutrality: Is singular they a cognitively efficient substitute for Generic he?"

A special case: American Sign Language

•list basic characteristics of American Sign Language
•recognize that ASL is a real language

Trask, Chapter 1, p. 19-23

Coursepack: “Silent Journey”

Tuesday, September  18

Stylistics and prescriptivism

contrast prescriptivist vs. descriptivist standards of language

Trask, Chapter 9

Sociolinguistics: regional variation

• differentiate between dialect, slang, and jargon

Trask, Chapter 4, p. 71-84

Tuesday, September 25

Sociolinguistics: Language and Gender

•explain how language reflects and reconstructs gender.

Trask, Chapter 4, p. 84-87

Bonvillain, Chapter 7 (Note: to be provided via Blackboard)

Review  for Test 1

•be familiar with format for Test 1

• take a practice test

Tuesday, October 2

Test 1

______________

Sociolinguistics: social issues: “Ebonics”

•identify the basic characteristics of African American Vernacular English  or AAVE (pronunciation & syntax)

“Black English in a place called Waterloo” (Note: to be provided via Blackboard)

Coursepack: “Hooked on Ebonics”

                    +

“In praise of spoken soul”

Tuesday, October 9

Pidgin and Creoles

•determine under what circumstances pidgins and creoles develop

• recognize that creoles are fully-fledged languages

Romaine, Chapter 6

(Note: to be provided via Blackboard)

Sociolinguistics: social issues: Bilingual Education

•identify the 5 kinds of bilingual education

•list and explain the relative advantages and disadvantages of each type

Trask, Chapter 4, p. 87-89

Tuesday, October 16

International Communication

•list the 5 non-verbal channels of communication

•explain the importance of non-verbal communication

•outline basic information about Esperanto

•explain the feasibility of English as a global language

Coursepack: “Your actions speak louder...”

+ “What global language?”

Semantics

Pragmatics

•differentiate the semantic roles of nouns and verbs

•identify processes that interfere with meaning

Trask, Chapter 3

Tuesday,
October 23

Discourse

•enumerate  common speech acts

•know Grice’s Maxims

•identify violations of Grice’s Maxims

Trask, Chapter 6, p. 117-130, 138-143

Historical Linguistics

•know how all languages are similar and how they differ

•identify language universals

•identify the major language families of the world

•describe processes of language change

Trask, Chapter 5

“Where do Languages Come From?” by Merritt Ruhlen
http://www.exploratorium.edu/exploring/language/index.html

Coursepack: "To grandparents, English word trend isn’t ‘Naisu.’"

+ "From swamp to snafu: American words through the centuries"

+ "In click languages, an echo of the tongues of the ancients”

Tuesday, October 30

Writing systems

•outline the evolution of writing systems

•identify writing systems

Trask, Chapter 6, p. 130-138

Review for Test 2

•be familiar with format for Test 2

• take a practice test

Tuesday, November  6

Test 2

______________

Computational Linguistics

•identify the issues involved

in machine translation,

speech recognition, speech synthesis, text understanding, and text generation

Coursepack: “Babbling our way to a new Babel: Erasing the language barriers”

Tuesday, November  13

First Language Acquisition

•describe stages of development of first language acquisition

Trask, Chapter 8

Second Language Acquisition

•differentiate between second language acquisition and foreign language learning

•debate the arguments for and against the  Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)

Coursepack: “The fundamental character of foreign language learning”

Tuesday, November  20

Thanksgiving break

______________

Tuesday, November  27

Foreign Language Learning

•list and describe the major methods of foreign language learning

•list the characteristics of a good language learner

Coursepack: "Language boot camp fills a void"

Computer-assisted Language Learning (CALL)

•describe the options in CALL

• analyze some of the major issues in CALL

Introduction to CALL, by Philip Hubbard (to be provided via Blackboard)

Information and Communications Technology for Language Teachers: http://www.ict4lt.org/

Tuesday, December  4

Neurolinguistics 

•identify the major parts of the brain in which language is processed
•identify visualization techniques for identifying language functions in the brain

Trask, Chapter 7

Animal Communication

•identify some of the ways in which animals communicate

•contrast “animal communication” with “animal language”

“Can Chimps Talk”
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/rbeard/chimps.html

Review  for Final Exam

•be familiar with format of final exam

• answer practice questions

Tuesday, December 11

Final Exam