Seth Cable Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language Spring 2012 Ling748 1 Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language (ling748): Syllabus Linguistics 748 Course Website: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1:25-2:15 http://people.umass.edu/scable/LING748-SP12/ Room: Dickinson 112 Course Instructor: Seth Cable E-mail: [email protected] Language Consultant (TA): Yang Gyeltshen 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 (Tshangla; Sino-Tibetan), 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 Spring 2012 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 four approximately equal sections (each about 10-15 min.), and post them to the class wiki. For each class-session, there will be four students whose task will be to transcribe one of those four sections. (Instructions on transcription are included in the document titled “Workflow”.) I will then pair these transcriptions with their accompanying sound-file on the course wiki. In the absence of any objections, assignment of a student to a given session will be determined alphabetically (i.e., we start with the first four students in the roster, and cycle through). 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/2012/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 fifth week of class (2/20), students will have weekly individual sessions with the class language consultant, Yang Gyeltshen. Students will individually arrange with Yang 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 Spring 2012 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. Outline of the Semester (With Important Dates) January 23 Review syllabus Review ‘Workflow’ Quick tour of the dictionary and the wiki Assignments: Short Transcription Assignment Short Dictionary Assignment Read Matthewson (2004) January 25 On the methodology of elicitation January 27 Introduction to Tshangla language and language consultant Basics of the language: Phonological Inventory Practical Orthography February 20 NO CLASS (Presidents’ Day) Students begin having individual sessions with Yang March 12 Declare topic(s) for final paper March 17-25 Spring Break April 16 NO CLASS (Patriot’s Day) April 17 MONDAY SCHEDULE April 30 Last Day of Class May 11 Final Papers Due May 15 Final Grades