$20
weeklyLinguistics From Sounds, Morphemes, & Syntax to Brains, Context and Conversation
Completed by 11 learners
Ages 13-18
Live Group Class
Live video meetings
1x per week
1-12 learners per class
45 min
What's included
1 live meeting
45 mins in-class hours per weekAssessment
Informal, in-class feedback will be provided, but no formal assessments will be used.Class Experience
US Grade 8 - 11
This ongoing course in linguistics will begin each session with a learning objective, short presentation, and guided and independent work on a linguistic concept 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 various languages, phrase structure rules, word order patterns cross-linguistically, theories of the origin of language, key nonhuman communication research, language and the brain, what language disorders can teach us about how language processing and production works, semantic and pragmatic theory, cognitive metaphor, how babies and children acquire language, how conversation is analyzed, how writing as human technology evolved historically, the classification of writing systems, genres of oral language, sign language and gesture, and how language changes over historical time. No prior knowledge is assumed for each meeting, but effort will be made to assess where students are and to lead them to expand their knowledge in each session, so experienced students are also welcome. The schedule for the first four weeks are as follows: Week of May 1: The Design Features of Language We will explore the list of characteristics, or features, that linguist Charles Hockett created that describe human language. Each feature (i.e., displacement- the ability to communicate about objects that are not present in time or space) will be examined carefully, and we will decide if any nonhuman animals have the feature in question (i.e., honeybees arguably have displacement). Taken as a complete list, the design features give us a good starting point to understanding what sets human language apart from other communication systems, and what links us to other creature. Students will fill in a worksheet on the design features. Week of May 7: Quantifying Human Languages We will learn why it is so difficult to count the total number of languages currently spoken on Earth. We will examine methods for counting (government censuses, anthropological fieldwork, etc.), and then criteria for distinguishing languages and varieties. We will also talk about the role of multilingualism in people's lives, and what it means to "know" a language. Students will create their own proposal for how they would go about quantifying human languages. Week of May 14: The Subfields of Linguistics We will take a tour of the traditional subfields of structural linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. We will fill in a graphic organizer with the names of each and a short description or definition of each subfield. Students will mark the ones that they find particularly interesting. Week of May 21: The Plosive Family We will learn what a plosive-- or stop-- is in articulatory phonetics. We will describe each one using parameters of place and manner of articulation as well as voicing. We will explore the World Atlas of Language Structures to learn how prevalent plosives are in human language, as well as few of the ways people vary the pronunciation of stops in various languages. Students will fill in a table based on the 3 parameters by the end of class.
Learning Goals
Each session will have a specific learning goal and sub-objectives, and will be different each time. The learning goals include but are not limited to the following:
Students can describe some ways languages can differ in terms of grammar and vocabulary
Students can explain the importance of linguistic fieldwork
Students can detail the role of informants in doing fieldwork
Students can explain some of the techniques of fieldwork methodology
Students can understand the articulatory phonetics approach to studying the sounds of language
Students are familiar with, and can utilize, phonetic transcription
Students understand the concept of the phoneme
Students have knowledge of the phonemes of English
Students are able to recognize prosodic features, and understand their role in speech
Students can describe the importance of linguistic formalism for studying culture and society
Students can define morphemes, and explain the different kinds
Students have facility in approaching basic problems in morphology and syntax
Students can explain how and when writing developed in different parts of the world
Students can describe various strategies people have used to put speech down on paper (or other medium)
Students can clarify how alphabets and syllabaries differ
Students can discuss how extra "nonverbal" features contribute to communication
Students can observe how different cultures/languages think about space, posture, and gestures
Students can argue that deaf sign languages are as "real" as a spoken language
Students can name and describe some of the groundbreaking ape-language experiments
Students can list and define the design features of language
Students can explain when a generalized communication system can become a language
Students are familiar with the causes of language death, and some of the ways it might be ameliorated
Students can name and describe three theories of language acquisition
Students can describe the basic neurological structures of the brain that relate to language
Students can clarify the different ways multilingualism is used
Students can explain and give examples of code-switching
Students can explain and give examples of diglossia
Students can explain the various ways languages are classified
Students can name some of the features of language typology
Students can describe some of the regularities of sound changes
Students can describe some of the processes of vocabulary change
Students are able to do reconstructions of some protolanguage forms
Students can explain the different criteria used to define dialects (varieties)
Students can explain the differences between dialect and style
Students can provide examples of language contact
Students can discern the differences between pidgins and creoles
Students appreciate the variety and distribution of the world's languages, and their numbers
Students can define what a speech community is
Students can apply the checklist theory of semantics
Students can apply the prototype theory of semantics
Students can explain the notions behind concepts, words, and categories
Students understand that meaning emerges from conversation
Students can describe the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and its components, linguistic determinism, and linguistic relativity
Students can describe the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and its components, linguistic determinism, and linguistic relativity
Students can describe how current digital communication and language affect one another
Students can apply Grice's Maxims of conversation
Students can identify speech acts from naturally occurring data
Students can describe the structure of a speech act
Students can explain the differences between positive and negative politeness strategies in interaction
Other Details
Supply List
Handouts for the sessions will be provided. I recommend that students have a notebook and pen/pencil even if they tend to take notes or work in digital spaces.
1 file available upon enrollment
Language of Instruction
English
External Resources
In addition to the Outschool classroom, this class uses:
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/).
Meet the teacher
Teacher expertise and credentials
Content expertise: PhD in Linguistics
Expertise working with high school students: I have been teaching an introductory 8-meeting course in Linguistics on Outschool successfully for 2 years. I have also taught at the community college level in which many of my students are high schoolers. Many students are drawn to the course content because they like the idea of inventing artificial languages for TV, film, and literature, and I capitalize on this interest to orient them to why it's important to understand the structure of human language.
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