Advanced Linguistics II
For students already familiar with the basics of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics
Serena W, PhD
Average rating:
5.0
Number of reviews:(18)
What's included
Homework
1 hour per week. Each class will have a problem to solve about a linguistic feature of a language. After the guided learning, the homework should take 10-60 minutes depending on the student.Assessment
There is no formal assessment, but students will receive feedback on the problem set for each class.Class Experience
US Grade 9 - 12
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). This continuing linguistics course will begin each session with a learning objective, short presentation, and guided and independent 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 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. 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 first four weeks are as follows: Week of Jan 7: Allophones vs. Phonemes in Navajo After we learn some history and context of the Navajo people, we will learn about the consonants of the Navajo language as well as the orthography used for written Navajo. We will consider some consonant sounds in context to determine whether they are variants of the same sound or different sounds in the language and use the phonological insight to make further predictions about Navajo pronunciation. Week of Jan 14: Basic Word Order in Shoshoni After an introduction to the Shoshoni people and history, we will focus on the concept of the dialect continuum, a situation where the differences between varieties of a language in close geographic proximity are either minor or few in number, resulting in mutual intelligibility between neighboring groups. Then we will focus on the word order of the adjectives, possessive adjectives, nouns, and adpositions in Shoshoni phrases. Week of Jan 21: Vowel Length in Mandan After an introduction to the Mandan people and history, we will examine a list of Mandan words to learn what the vowel length patterns can teach us about its phonology. Week of Jan 28: Codeswitching between Southwest Spanish and English We will begin with some history and social context for Spanish spoken in the Southwest United States. We will study some of the motivations for codeswitching between two languages by examining data in Southwest Spanish/English. Students will work with the original language and a translated gloss to determine whether the codeswitch is a triggered switch, an accommodation, a quotation, a formulaic routine, the use of discourse markers, stylistic resources, emphasis, or identity markers.
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
Pre-Requisites
Advanced Linguistics or equivalent
Supply List
In addition to the Outschool classroom, this class uses: Type IPA phonetic symbols World Atlas of Linguistic Structures Online
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/).
Joined March, 2020
5.0
18reviews
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 since 2020. 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.Reviews
Live Group Course
$27
weekly or $420 for 16 weeks16 weeks
Completed by 2 learners
No live video meetings
Ages: 13-18
