FALL 2000
This information effective for Fall 2000.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
Instructor(s): Judith Aissen
Fall 2000
MWF 2:00-3:10pm
College Eight, Room 250
E-mail: aissen@cats.ucsc.edu
This course is a general introduction to the nature of language, its complexity and its diversity. The first part of the course will focus on the core areas of language study: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The second part of the course will focus on issues in language and society. These may include such topics as dialects, American Sign Language, the acquisition of language, and the official English language movement. By the end of the course you should be acquainted with systematic methods of studying language, be aware of the fundamental similarities of all human languages as well as their startling diversity, and have an informed perspective on how issues of language impact our society. This course does not satisfy any named requirements for the linguistics major.
Class participation, weekly homework assignments, a midterm, and a final exam.
None.
IH (Introduction to Humanities)
Fall 2000
Class Meetings: MWF 2:00-3:10pm
Room: Kresge, Room 321
Phonetics is the study of human speech sounds. This course emphasizes the acquisition of four related skills: recognition, transcription, description, and production of speech sounds. The focus is not on any particular language. Given a good grasp of phonetics, one can listen to any human language and record accurately on paper the way it sounded so that any other phonetician could read it back. This skill is extremely useful for anyone who ever plans to be in a foreign language environment, and is also applicable in a number of other domains, for instance, speech therapy, research work on machine recognition and synthesis of speech, dialect acquisition for actors, foreign pronunciation for broadcasters, and of course the study of linguistics. The work will involve learning a highly useful phonetic alphabet, and acquiring an understanding of the articulator and acoustic properties of speech sounds. In addition, students will apply this knowledge in order to understand better facts about language sound systems, e.g., why certain sounds are common or uncommon.
None.
IH (Introduction to Humanities)
Instructor(s): Judith Aissen
Fall 2000
e-mail: aissen@cats.ucsc.edu
Class Meetings: MWF 11:00-12:10pm
Room: Stevenson, Room 151
This course is an introduction to English syntax (principles of sentence construction) and constitutes the entry course to the syntax sequence for linguistic majors. No prior linguistic or other training is presupposed. The work for the course consists entirely of homework problems. These problems will be designed to involve students in observation and analysis of linguistic data, and in the construction and testing of syntactic theories. At two times during the quarter, the problems will be more comprehensive and time-consuming, and will be called take-home exams. There is no text. The homework will require time and careful attention, and will usually be rather challenging. An assignment will be given at every class, due at the following class, and returned the class after that. It will be impossible to follow the course without doing the homework, and it must be done on time, because the next class discussion will depend on it. Though it is part of the required core sequence for linguistics majors, Syntax I is designed for all students interested in an introduction to a rigorous, scientific approach to language study, a better understanding of the structure of English and of language in general, or just plenty of exercise in precise thought and writing.
Satisfaction of the Subject 'A' requirement.
IH (Introduction to Humanities), W (Writing Intensive).
Instructor(s): James McCloskey
Fall 2000
e-mail: mcclosk@ling.ucsc.edu
Class Meetings: MWF 11:00-12:10pm
Room: Cowell, Room 134
This course is an introduction to syntactic analysis in the framework of generative grammar. No previous training in linguistics is assumed. The work will proceed by way of class discussion and homework assignments. Both the discussion and the homework will focus on selected topics in the syntax of English, German, French, Spanish and other languages. Course requirements: 12-14 homework assignments and a take-home final exam. This course satisfies a core course requirement in linguistics for the language studies major. It does not satisfy any named requirement for the linguistics major.
None.
IH (Introduction to Humanities).
Instructor(s): Geoffrey K. Pullum
Fall 2000
e-mail: pullum@ling.ucsc.edu
Class Meetings: MWF 9:30-10:40am
Room: Room 75, Social Science II
This course will provide a critical survey of the theorizing on language that has been published over the last 45 years by the most influential linguist of the twentieth century, Noam Chomsky. It will emphasize the influence of that theorizing on disciplines outside linguistics - in particular, psychology and philosophy, but to some extent anthropology, biology, education, artificial intelligence, and computer science.
We will begin by examining the goals that Chomsky laid out for the study of language and the novel methodology that he advocated for the pursuit of those goals - his rejection of the idea that linguistics was or ever could be a behavioral science (and his concomitant encouragement of the post-1960 emergence of cognitive psychology). We then examine the principal claims about the nature of language that have emerged from that work, among them being (I) the claim that there are universal features of human language design that are surprising in that they are neither coincidental nor logically necessary in all languages, but systematically present in the ones that humans use; (ii) the claim that those universal features stem from a species-specific genetic endowment, i.e. that babies do not figure out how languages can be learned, they inherit a predesigned human-only capability for language learning from their parents; and (iii) the claim that language-learning is fundamentally different from other kinds of learning in the way it proceeds. Some broader implications will then be examined: the revival of rationalist epistemological views about innate ideas, the issue of whether species other than humans have linguistic capacities, and Chomsky's claims of implications about intrinsic and inescapable limits on human understanding. At each step, the strategy pursued will be to reach as clear an understanding of the Chomskyan position as possible, and then to confront that understanding with critiques from various perspectives.
Evaluation will be based on a combination of class participation and written work. Written work will consist of three short papers, which will be based on reading and on class discussions. In the papers, students will be expected to survey and critically evaluate some of the debates with which the course is concerned, basing their arguments on the content of the lectures and the interchanges in class and in discussion section meetings.
None (but interests in languages, philosophy, or psychology will be an advantage).
T5 ((Topical - Humanities & Arts or Social Sciences)
Instructor(s): Armin Mester
Fall 2000
e-mail: mester@ling.ucsc.edu
Class Meetings: MWF 2:00-3:10pm
Room: Cowell, Room 134
Phonetics and phonology are the two branches of linguistics that deal with sound structure. While phonetics focuses on the physical manifestations of sounds and on theories of speech production and perception, phonology is concerned with the systems of rules that determine how the basic sounds of a language combine. We will begin by discussing the internal structure of sounds and developing a precise formalism (the distinctive feature system) for representing this internal structure. We will then consider the kinds of systematic regularities in sound-combination that motivate phonological rules. The rest of the course will be devoted to three fundamental questions that can be raised about phonological rules: What is the form of these rules? How do they interact with one another? And what are the properties of the representations to which they apply? Because phonological rules can depend on word structure, any rigorous investigation of phonology inevitably touches on this area as well. Thus, this course also constitutes an introduction to morphology (word structure). Course requirements: Weekly problems, midterm, and final exam.
Phonetics (LING 51) or Intro to Linguistics (LING 20).
W (Writing Intensive).
Instructor(s): Junko Ito
Fall 2000
e-mail: ito@ling.ucsc.edu
Class Meetings: TTH 10:0-1:45am
Room: Cowell, Room 216
Morphology is the study of how words are constructed, just as syntax is the study of how sentences are constructed. Morphology has an obvious connection to phonology, since words are made up of phonemes as well as of morphemes, and the phonological shape of a morpheme may depend on its phonological environment; it also has a connection to syntax, since the internal structure of a word may depend in part on its syntactic environment; and it has a connection to semantics, since the meaning of a complex word is a function (sometimes a very interesting function) of the meanings of its parts. The course has two main goals: (i) to provide an introduction to some of the basic theoretical problems in morphology, and (ii) to go through a series of problems in order to see morphological processes at work and develop the ability of doing morphological analysis. As a term project, each student will adopt a language and be responsible for developing a morphological description for it. The work will consist of a number of analytical problems, some readings, and a term paper on the morphology of some language.
LING 52 (Syntax I) and LING 101 (Phonology I)
Instructor(s): Sandra Chung
Fall 2000
e-mail: chung@ling.ucsc.edu
Class Meetings: MWF 12:30-1:40pm
Room: Room 363, Social Science II
An introduction to the linguistic aspects of poetry: rhyme, meter, and the large-scale organization of poetic form. The emphasis will be on English poetry, complemented by brief sketches of other traditions (e.g., Maori, Japanese, Greek, Roman, Irish).
Class participation; assigned readings and exercises; a midterm exam; and a final exam or final project.
Students taking this course should have some basic knowledge of language structure (e.g., as provided by LING 20).
None.