Seth Cable Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language Fall 2009 Ling748 1 Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language (ling748): Syllabus Linguistics 748 Course Website: Tuesday, Thursday 11:15 - 12:30 http://people.umass.edu/scable/LING748-FA09/ Room: Hasbrouck Lab Add 106 Course Instructor: Seth Cable E-mail: [email protected] Language Consultant (TA): Martina Achieng E-mail: [email protected] 1. General Overview (Course Description) The goals of this course are twofold. First, this course will provide students with (further) experience in the general task of investigating a language through one-on-one interviews with its speakers (i.e. ‘fieldwork’). Secondly, this course will allow students to gain extensive and relatively comprehensive scholarly knowledge of an unfamiliar and under-documented language. Students will elicit, record and transcribe language data from the speaker of an unfamiliar, non-Indo-European language (Dholuo; Nilo-Saharan), and will develop original, theoretically-informed analyses of those data. Moreover, student work will highlight the ways in which the structure of the language informs current debates within linguistic theory. The class as a whole will also work towards the creation of (i) an on-line, searchable dictionary for the language, and (ii) a publicly available archive (wiki) for the language data collected during the course of the semester.Seth Cable Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language Fall 2009 Ling748 2 2. Course Requirements This will be a very time-intensive course. Most of the work will consist of (i) transcription of interview sessions, (ii) contributing to the class dictionary, and (iii) the final paper. 2.1 Active Class Attendance This course is essentially a ‘lab practicum’ in descriptive, analytic and theoretical linguistics. Nearly all the content of the course will be in what we do and what we learn during the interview sessions in class. For this reason, all students must be actively engaged in and contribute to the class interview sessions. 2.2 Transcription Assignments Each interview session in class will be digitally recorded. I will then divide that recording into approximately equal sections, one for each student enrolled in the course, and post them to the class wiki. Each student will be assigned a section of the recording to transcribe. (Instructions regarding transcription are included in the document titled “Workflow”.) I will then pair these transcriptions with their accompanying sound-file on the course wiki. Assignment of recordings will be varied in a way that prevents the same student from always receiving the same portion of the recording. 2.3 Contributions to Dictionary In addition to students’ individual final projects, the class as a whole will be continuously engaged in two over-arching projects: (a) The creation of an on-line, searchable dictionary for the language (b) The creation of a permanent archive (wiki) for the language data obtained in class. A link to the on-line dictionary for the course appears on the course website. In addition, the URL is: http://web.linguist.umass.edu/~cable/2009/ling748/dict/ Students transcribing a class session are expected to contribute any new vocabulary encountered during the session to the class dictionary. (Instructions on how to do this appear in the document titled “Workflow”.) 2.4 Individual Meetings Beginning in the fourth week of class (9/29), students will have weekly individual, hour-long sessions with the class language consultant, Martina Achieng. Students will individually arrange with Martina a regular time and place for their weekly meeting. Students will record these weekly meetings using equipment that I make available to them. Upon their return of the equipment, I will upload the recording the class wiki. Students will then transcribe the recording, and I will post their transcriptions.Seth Cable Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language Fall 2009 Ling748 3 2.5 Final Project Each student will be required to submit a final paper, analyzing some aspect of the language’s structure (phonology, phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics). This analysis must: (a) Incorporate data obtained from the class’s language consultant (b) Make contact with some area of linguistic theory. Each of the students’ final papers will be posted to the course wiki, and will form a permanent component of the publicly available archive for the course. 3. The Structure of The Course: An Overview 3.1 Structure of Class Sessions 11:15 – 11:20 Review 11:20 – 11:50 Interview (Beginning with “Phrases of the Day”) 11:50 – 11:55 BREAK 11:55 – 12:25 Interview 12:25 – 12:30 Wrap Up (Set Agenda for Next Time) 3.2 Important Dates September 8 FIRST DAY OF CLASS Review syllabus Review ‘Workflow’ Quick tour of the dictionary and the wiki Some basic info on the Dholuo language Set a preliminary agenda for research September 10 FIRST DAY WITH LANGUAGE CONSULTANT Sounds of the language Begin investigation of the language… September 22 No Class September 24 No Class September 29 Students begin having individual sessions with Martina October 13 No Class (Monday schedule) November 3 Declare topic for final paper November 5 No Class November 19 No Class November 26 No Class (Thanksgiving) December 10 Final Class December 20 Final Papers Due December 28 Grades