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Advanced Linguistics: Structure from Sounds to Discourse

A continuation of linguistics, the exploration of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of human language
Serena W, PhD
Average rating:
5.0
Number of reviews:
(22)
Class
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What's included

6 live meetings
4 hrs 30 mins in-class hours
Assessment
There is no formal assessment, but students will receive informal and supportive feedback as they work through the linguistic problems for each language.

Class Experience

US Grade 8 - 11
Advanced Level
This advanced course in linguistics assumes the student has either taken "Linguistics for Grades 9-12" or "Linguistics from Sounds, Morphemes, and Syntax to Brains, Context, and Conversation" (or an equivalent course elsewhere). We begin each session with a learning objective, short presentation, and guided work on a linguistics problem from areas such as articulatory phonetics, phonological processes in human language, syllable structure and phonotactic constraints, the internal structure of words, word-formation processes, morphological analysis of a language, phrase structure rules, word order patterns cross-linguistically, semantic theory, how writing as human technology evolved historically, the classification of writing systems, and how language changes over historical time. Though some prior knowledge is assumed for the course in general, effort will be made to assess where students are and to lead them to expand their knowledge in each session, so varied experiences are welcome.

The schedule for the classes are as follows:

Week 1 A Native American phonology and morphology analysis
First we will learn some history and context of the linguistic community and a little about the prominent features of the language. Then we will complete a phonology problem and a morphology problem in the language.

Week 2 Jamaican Creole
First we will learn some history and context of the linguistic community and a little about the prominent features of the language.
Then, we will work on a problem from morphology and syntax.

Week 3 Spanish
First we will learn some history and context of the linguistic community and a little about the prominent features of the language.
Then, we will work on problems from syntax, semantics, and if time, discourse analysis.

Learning Goals

Students will learn to distinguish language varieties and dialects.
Students will gain insight into languages they speak and hear around them.
Students will understand how language contact shapes languages.
Students will appreciate linguistic and cultural diversity.
Students will learn the sociocultural context of the languages spoken in the United States.
Students will reinforce concepts learned in structural linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.
Students will learn to describe systematic variation in dialects of the same language.
learning goal

Other Details

Supply List
A PDF of the problems we will be working on will be sent ahead of each class.
Language of Instruction
English
External Resources
Learners will not need to use any apps or websites beyond the standard Outschool tools.
Sources
We will refer to the International Phonetic Association's consonants and vowels of human language, the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures, and we will make use of an online keyboard for phonetic transcription (https://ipa.typeit.org/full/). Shoshoni Source Material: Clark, Ella E., and Margot Edmonds. 1979. Sacagawea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Criswell, Elijah Harry. 1940. Lewis and Clark: Linguistic pioneers. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Crum, Beverly, Earl Crum, and Jon P. Dayley. 2001. Newe Hupia: Shoshoni poetry songs. Logan: Utah State University Press. Crum, Beverly, and Jon P. Dayley. 1993. Western Shoshoni grammar. Occasional Papers and Monographs in Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics 1. Boise, ID: Boise State University, Department of Anthropology. Crum, Beverly, and Jon P. Dayley. 1997. Shoshoni texts. Occasional Papers and Monographs in Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics 2. Boise, ID: Boise State University, Department of Anthropology. Di Paolo, Marianna, and Robert D. Sykes. 2010. Acoustic evidence for a vowel shift in Shoshoni. Presented at the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, January 2010. Elzinga, Dirk. 1999. The consonants of Gosiute. PhD diss., University of Arizona. Fisher, William, ed. 1812. New travels among the Indians of North America: Being a compilation, taken partly from the communications already published, of Lewis and Clark, to the President of the United States, and partly from other authors who travelled among the various tribes of Indians . . .with a dictionary of the tongue [Cree]. Philadelphia: J. Sharan. Gould, Drusilla, and Christopher Loether. 2002. An introduction to the Shoshoni language. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Gould, Drusilla, and Christopher Loether. n.d. Shoshoni on-line dictionary. http://shoshonidictionary.com/shoshonidictionary.asp Hage, Per, and Wick R. Miller. 1976. ‘Eagle’ = ‘bird’: A note on the structure and evolution of Shoshoni ethnoornithological nomenclature. American Ethnologist 3.3: 481–488. Karttunen, Frances. 1994. Between worlds: Interpreters, guides, and survivors. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lewis, Meriwether, 1774–1809 (2001). Original journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Vol. 1, Parts 1–2. Ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites. Scituate, MA: Digital Scanning. Electronic resource. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/utah/Doc?id=10015046 “Lewis and Clark History: Sacagawea ~ Sacajawea ~ Sakakawea.” LewisAndClarkTrail.com. http://lewisandclarktrail.com/sacajawea.htm McLaughlin, John E. 2012. Shoshoni grammar. Languages of the World/Materials, no. 488. Munich: LinCom Europa. Miller, Wick R. 1970. Western Shoshoni dialects. In Earl H. Swanson Jr., ed., Languages and cultures of western North America: Essays in honor of Sven S. Liljeblad, 17–36. Pocatello: Idaho State University. Miller, Wick R. 1972. Newe Natekwinappeh: Shoshoni stories and dictionary. University of Utah Anthropological Papers 94. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Miller, Wick R. 1996. Sketch of Shoshone, a Uto-Aztecan language. In William C. Sturtevant, ed., Handbook of American Indians, vol. 17, 693–720, Ives Goddard, ed., Languages. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. “Sacagawea’s Baby—Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.” n.d. Retrieved from LewisAndClarkTrail.com. http://lewisandclarktrail.com/sacagaweasbaby.htm Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. n.d. “Lewis & Clark: Mapping the West.” http://www.mnh.si.edu/education/lc/lcmapping/ Tidzump, M. 1970. Shoshone thesaurus. Grand Forks, ND: Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota. Vander, Judith. 1997. Shoshone Ghost Dance religion: Poetry songs and Great Basin context. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Jamaican Creole Source Material: Bailey, Beryl Loftman. 1966. Jamaican Creole syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bilby, Kenneth. 1983. How the “older heads” talk: A Jamaican Maroon spirit possession language. Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 57.1–2: 37–88. Cassidy, Frederic G. 1961. Jamaica talk: Three hundred years of the English language in Jamaica. London: MacMillan. Cassidy, Frederic G., and Robert B. Le Page, eds. 1967 (1980, 2nd ed.). Dictionary of Jamaican English. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cooper, Carolyn. n.d. Jamaica Woman Tongue [blog using Jamaican Creole]. http://carolynjoycooper.wordpress.com/ DeCamp, David. 1971.Towards a generative analysis of a post-creole speech continuum. In Dell Hymes, ed., Pidginization and creolization of languages, 349–370. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edwards,Viv. 1986. Language in a black community. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Jamaican Language Unit. 2001. Spelling Jamaican the Jamaican way. Teaching materials on Jamaican Creole orthography. Kingston, JA: University of the West Indies at Mona. http://www.mona.uwi.edu/dllp/jlu/documents/spelling-jamaican-the-jamaican-way-Handout.pdf Patrick, Peter L. 1997. Style and register in Jamaican Patwa. In Edgar W. Schneider, ed., Englishes around the world: Studies in honour of Manfred Görlach. Vol. 2, Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Australasia, 41–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Patrick, Peter L. 1999. Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the mesolect. Varieties of English Around the World G17. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Patrick, Peter L. 2004. Jamaican Creole: Morphology and syntax. In Bernd Kortmann, Edgar W. Schneider, Clive Upton, Rajend Mesthrie, and Kate Burridge, eds., A handbook of varieties of English. Vol. 2, Morphology and syntax, 407–438. Topics in English Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Pollard,Velma. 1994. Dread talk:The language of Rastafari. Kingston, JA: Canoe Press. Sebba, Mark. 1993. London Jamaican: Language systems in interaction. London: Longman. Sutcliffe, David. 1982. British Black English. Oxford: Blackwell. Spanish Source Material: Amastae, Jon, and Lucía Elías-Olivares, eds. 1982. Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic aspects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cobos, Ruben. 1983. A dictionary of New Mexico and southern Colorado Spanish. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press. Duran, Richard P., ed. 1981. Latino language and communicative behavior. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Elías-Olivares, Lucía, ed. 1983. Spanish in the U.S. setting: Beyond the Southwest. Rossylyn, VA: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Elías-Olivares, Lucía, Elizabeth A. Leone, René Cisneros, and John Gutierrez. 1985. Spanish language use and public life in the USA. The Hague: Mouton. Espinosa, Aurelio M. 1909. Studies in New Mexican Spanish, part I: Phonology. Biblioteca de Dialectología Hispanoamericana 1, ed. Amado Alonso and Angel Rosenblat (1930). Buenos Aires: Instituto de Filología. Fuentes, Dagoberto, and José A. López. 1974. Barrio language dictionary: First dictionary of Caló. La Puente, CA: El Barrio Publications. Galván, Roberto A., and Richard V. Teschner. 1994. El diccionario del español chicano/The dictionary of Chicano Spanish. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Co. Hernández-Chávez, Eduardo, Anthony F. Beltramo, and Andrew D. Cohen. 1975. El lenguaje de los chicanos. Arlington,VA: Center for Applied Linguistics. Peñalosa, Fernando. 1980. Chicano sociolinguistics. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Sánchez, Rosaura. 1994. Chicano discourse: Socio-historic perspectives. Houston, TX: Arte Público [Rowley, MA: Newbury House]. Teschner, Richard V., Garland D. Bills, and Jerry R. Craddock. 1975. Spanish and English of United States Hispanos: A critical, annotated, linguistic bibliography. Arlington,VA: Center for Applied Linguistics. Thomason, Sarah G. 2001. Language contact: An introduction. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Valdés, Guadalupe. 1982 [1976]. Social interaction and code-switching patterns: A case study of Spanish/English alternation. In Jon Amastae and Lucía Elías-Olivares, eds., Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic aspects, 209–229. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bailey, Benjamin. 2002. Language, race, and negotiation of identity: A study of Dominican Americans. New York: LFP Scholarly Publications. Bartlett, Lesley, and Ofelia García. 2011. Additive schooling in subtractive times: Bilingual education and Dominican immigrant youth in the Heights. Nashville, TN:Vanderbilt University Press. Bullock, Barbara E., and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio. 2009. Reconsidering Dominican Spanish: Data from the rural Cibao. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana 14: 49–73. Bullock, Barbara E., and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio. 2010. Correcting the record on Dominican [s]-hypercorrection. In S. Colina, A. Olarrea, and A. Carvalho, eds., Romance linguistics 2009, 15–24. New York: John Benjamins. Bullock, Barbara E., and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio. Forthcoming. From Trujillo to the terremoto: The effects of language ideologies on the language attitudes of the rural poor of the northern Dominican border. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Diaz, Junot. 2007. The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead Books. Henríquez-Ureña, Pedro. 1940. El español en Santa Domingo. Buenos Aires: Biblioteca de Dialectología Hispanomericana V. Hudson, R.A. 1980. Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jensen, Leif, Jeffrey H. Cohen, Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, Gordon DeJong, and Leila Rodríguez. 2006. Ethnic identities, language and economic outcomes among Dominicans in a new destination. Social Science Quarterly 87: 1088–1099. Jiménez Sabater, Max A. 1975. Más datos sobre el español de la República Dominicana. Santo Domingo: Ediciones Intec. Levitt, Peggy. 2001. The transnational villagers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lipski, John. 1994. Latin American Spanish. New York: Longman Linguistics Library. Núñez Cedeño, Rafael. 2003. Double plurals in Dominican: A morpho-pragmatic account. In P. Kempchinsky and C. Piñeros, eds., Theory, practice, and acquisition: Papers from the 6th Hispanic Linguistic Symposium and the 5th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish, 68–82. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Núñez Cedeño, Rafael. 2008. The /-e/ in popular Dominican Spanish: An expressive marker not a double plural. Spanish in Context 5: 196–223. Ortiz López, Luis. 2011. Spanish in contact with Haitian Creole. In M. Diaz Campos, ed., The handbook of Hispanic sociolinguistics, 855–904. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Otheguy, Ricardo, Ana Celia Zentella, and David Livert. 2007. Language and dialect contact in Spanish in New York: Toward the formation of a speech community. Language 83: 770–802. Paulino, Edward. 2005. Erasing the Kreyol from the margins of the Dominican Republic: The pre- and post-nationalization project of the border, 1930–1945. Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and Its Diaspora 8: 39–75. Pita, Marianne D., and Sharon Utakis. 2002. Educational policy for the transnational Dominican community. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 1.4: 317–328.
Joined March, 2020
5.0
22reviews
Profile
Teacher expertise and credentials
PhD Linguistics, specializing in sociolinguistics
K-12 Secondary Teaching degree
2 years experience teaching linguistics courses on Outschool to high school students

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Live Group Class
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$67

weekly

2x per week, 3 weeks
45 min
Completed by 1 learner
Live video meetings
Ages: 13-18
3-6 learners per class

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