WINTER 2000
This information effective for Winter 2000.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
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 ó 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 articulatory 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.
Prerequisites: none. General Education Code: IH (Introduction to Humanities) Fall 1999 Staff, Winter 2000 Jaye Padgett, Spring 2000 Staff
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.
Prerequisites: none. General Education Codes: IH (Introduction to Humanities), W (Writing Intensive). Fall 1999 Judith Aissen,Winter 2000 James McCloskey
This course is an introduction to the study of linguistic meaning and its role in communication through language. The study of meaning in language covers a wide range of topics, ranging from the connection between an individual's use of language and his or her cultural knowledge and particular beliefs to the investigation of the principles which explain the meaning of a sentence based upon the meaning of its component words. Semantics narrowly construed studies the representation of lexical (word) meaning and compositional (sentence) meaning. The study of the interpretation of language use in context is often termed pragmatics. This course deals with both areas. Topics to be covered: the relationship between the meaning of a sentence and one's understanding of an utterance; working out the implications of what is said; the complex meanigs of some small words; how the meaning of a sentence is based on the meaning of its parts. Work for the course includes reading approximately four papers and submitting answers to weekly problem sets and a final essay. The course will (probably) have obligatory once-a-week discussion sections.
Prerequisites: none. General Education Code: IH (Introduction to Humanities). Winter 2000 Daniel Büring
Exploring the historical origin and development of word elements in English, as well as their sound, meaning, and function in the contemporary language, the course aims to offer a deeper understanding of the language that has become the international medium of communication, and at the same time provide tools for vocabulary expansion and word-building techniques. The roots of English vocabulary are extremely varied, with words of Celtic, Scandinavian, and Romance origin, as well as borrowings from all the continents (American Indian, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, etc.). One of the goals of the course is to analyze the structure of the English vocabulary, which in fact mirrors the diversity of the world's languages, thereby enhancing the students' awareness of the multi-cultural basis of their mother tongue. Evaluation will be based on class participation, weekly assignments, weekly quizzes, midterm and final.
Prerequisites: none. General Education Code: T4 (Topical: Humanities & Arts). Winter 2000 William Ladusaw
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.
Prerequisite: Phonetics (LING 51) or Intro to Linguistics (LING 20). Fall 1999 Jaye Padgett, Winter 1999 Armin Mester
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.
Prerequisite: LING 52 (Syntax I) and LING 101 (Phonology I) Winter 2000 Jaye Padgett
Syntax II continues the investigation of generative transformational grammar begun in Syntax I Several complex constructions of English grammar are introduced: constituent questions, relative clauses, topic and cleft constructions. We will first formulate rules that describe the basic properties of these constructions and then go on to examine the constraints on their operation. As the quarter proceeds, we will use these constraints to arrive at a version of generative syntax in which there are no specific transformational rules. Syntax II differs little from Syntax I in organization: though there will be some reading, the course will be driven principally by class discussion and by the homework. There will be several homework assignments per week, a take-home midterm, and a take-home final. At the end of this course, you should be in a position to read much of the classic work in transformational grammar. You will also be familiar with some important assumptions made in more recent generative syntax. Your control over argumentation and analysis will be stronger, and you will be able to carry out syntactic investigation on your own. Whether you intend to continue work in syntax or not, this course rounds out your understanding of syntactic structure, completing the picture sketched out in Syntax I.
Prerequisite: Syntax I (LING 52). General Education Code: W (Writing Intensive). Winter 2000 Sandra Chung
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) is designed to give students practical experience in teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to adults in the United States and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to adults abroad. Creativity, interactive participation, and problem solving are central to this course. Class time includes practical activities, mini-lectures, practice of student-prepared lessons, and discussion of the readings. Readings focus on theories, methods, techniques, and specific activities for teaching English to non-native speakers. In addition to class time, students spend 4-6 hours per week observing/practice teaching in a local ESL class where they are responsible for designing and presenting some original lessons.
Course requirements: practicum, readings, lesson demonstrations, short response papers, and final portfolio. Prerequisites: none. Winter 2000, Spring 2000 Patricia Sulllivan
This is a class in comparative grammar, which has a dual purpose. We first seek to systematically survey major phonological, morphological, and syntactic properties of several Romance languages. By doing so, we will also develop an appreciation of the goals and methods of constructing grammatical explanations. Students entering the course should have one Romance language other than English whose structure they intend to explore. The course will satisfy the 'Structure of' requirement for Language Studies students, who will focus on their major language. Prerequisites: Ling 52 (Syntax I) or Ling 55 (Syntactic Structures) and Ling 101 (Phonology I). Spring 2000 Donka Farkas
To enroll in the graduate (200-) courses, undergraduates require special permission from the instructor. Permission is usually granted only to especially motivated undergraduates who have completed all the core course requirements.
This course deals with phonological feature theory, the organization of the phonological part of the grammar, and the nature and role of phonological constraints. The theoretical perspective throughout is that of Optimality Theory (OT). Familiarity with the fundamental notions of this theory is assumed; the course serves as an introduction to more advanced questions relating to faithfulness, constraint ranking, and other issues. Requirements: (i) regular participation; (ii) weekly readings; (iii) occasional homework exercises (iv) two papers (each with a brief oral presentation). Prerequisite: Ling 211 (Phonology A). Winter 2000 Armin Mester
Unbounded Dependencies: The syntax of unbounded dependencies, including constituent questions, relative clauses, clefts, focus constructions, comparatives, and the like. Topics to be covered include: island constraints and subajacency, licensing conditions on gaps, the uniformity or not of different unbounded dependencies. Course requirements: Approximately five problem sets, some reading, a final short paper. Prerequisite: Ling 221 (Syntax A). Winter 2000 Judith Aissen
This course is an advanced graduate seminar on English syntax. The aim will be to draw attention to, and to begin to remedy, the remarkable and unfortunate separation of the traditional practice of grammatical description from the modern discipline of theoretical linguistics. At its worst, this separation has produced not only standard reference grammars written without reference to the theoretical literature on syntax, semantics, and morphology, but also linguistic theories formulated by people ignorant of traditional grammatical description. As Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell might have said, to permit one of these may be regarded as a misfortune; to permit both looks like carelessness.
A key difference between traditional description and modern theory is that contemporary theorists focus on selected parts of the language thought productive of theoretical insight while traditional grammarians are obliged to aim at full coverage. The associated dangers are obvious. Sail too close to the demand that you describe everything and you may find yourself driven to paper-thin coverage -- or worse (for even superficial accounts are better than nonexistent ones) you may never produce anything because the challenge paralyzes the will. But steer too far the other way, and you find yourself doing the kind of work Jim McCloskey refers to as 'unenlightened tinkering': working out minor details of an intricate theory of a small set of facts that fails to yield real insight or to generalize to well-known facts you have omitted from your purview.
This course offers a tour through the straits between the Scylla of superficiality and the Charybdis of myopia. The trip is feasible. Attempting detailed wide-ranging description while keeping theoretical concerns in mind is in fact highly productive of new theoretical insight. And wide-ranging description actually cannot be done without a strong underlying theory, because languages are too huge and complex to be described at all without a sound theory to reduce their proliferating chaos to system and order. We will survey a number of topics that are seldom treated in contemporary syntactic theory, keeping in view both the contributions of both several hundred years of traditional grammatical description and the demands for rigor and explicitness that have characterized the best of generative grammar. The idea is to confront theories with sets of data they have utterly overlooked (and it is extraordinary how many new facts there are to discover about English) and to confront traditional summaries of the facts with theoretical accounts that make new sense out of them.
The requirement for students taking the course for credit will be that they complete a paper that shows the influence of the approach taken in the seminar: reworkings of theoretical accounts of small sets of familiar facts will not suffice; new factual material must also be supplied. Attention will be made to modern methods of testing hypotheses using computer searches of text corpora as an aid to standard armchair methods of working. Significant class participation will be expected; this will include research on particular problems and interim presentations of results in class. The course will be ideal for those seeking a new topic on which to write a syntax/semantics paper, because significantly neglected areas of grammar will be deliberately sought out. Prerequisite: Ling 222 (Syntax B). Spring 2000 Geoffrey K. Pullum
This course covers the application of model-theoretic techniques in the explication of natural language semantics. We cover the type-theoretic description of ontology, generalized quantifier theory, and the basics of 'Montague Grammar'. The second half of the course is devoted to the study of the discourse-dynamic approach to the description of meaning. Special attention will be given to modality, negation, and propositional structure. Course requirements: Work for the course will consist of some problem sets and a term paper. Readings: Articles from current literature, Heim 1982 and Gamut 1991 Volume 2. Prerequisite: Ling 231 (Semantics A) Winter 2000 Donka Farkas
The research seminar is intended to develop your skills in linguistic research and other professional activities. To benefit from participation in the seminar, you should already have underway a clearly defined research project of substantial scope. (Consequently enrollment is by permission of the instructor, granted as described below.) Work for the course will consist of various activities relating to the research projects of the members of the seminar. We write abstracts, revise drafts, compile bibliographies, do literature reviews, and do peer review of class projects. Participants must give a formal presentation on their research and submit a draft and a final revision of a research paper. Prerequisites for enrollment: 1. Successful completion of first year graduate courses. 2. Submission to the instructor of a draft paper based on the proposed research topic on or before the end of the fall quarter. 3. Approval of the research project by the instructor. Winter 2000 Junko Ito