Linguistics

This hands-on course examines how new technologies and vast bodies of real language data have transformed the study of the English language. Students examine multi-million-word collections of language and focus on analyzing real data using computational tools to find out more about language, culture, and society. While computational methods are used extensively, no advanced computing knowledge is required.

Phonology is the ability of the human brain to organize speech sounds. This course explores different aspects of phonology within generative linguistics, using rule-based frameworks in the tradition of Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) Sound Pattern of English.  The course discusses phonological representations, phonological features, phonology-morphology interaction, syllabification, and stress assignment.   

This course is the first half of the course Modern Chinese, which introduces the basics of phonetics, phonology, lexicology, and syntax of modern Chinese. The first half of the course includes three sections: introduction, phonetics and phonology. The introduction section highlights the relationship between the Chinese language and Chinese characters, the history of Putonghua (standard Mandarin Chinese), Chinese dialect classification, and the standardization of the modern Chinese language. The phonetics section covers basic knowledge of acoustic and general phonetics. The phonology section provides an introduction to the phonology of Putonghua, and the relationship between Hanyu Pinyin Fang’an (the Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet) and the Mandarin phonological system.

This course is for students who have no previous knowledge of Irish Sign Language (ISL). Students develop a basic knowledge of signs so that they are able to participate in simple everyday communicative situations. ISL may be of particular value to students seeking a career in health or education or for those who have contact with deaf people through work, friends, or family. It may also be of intrinsic interest to linguists. 

The course provides students with a first introduction to language acquisition research – with particular reference to second language acquisition (SLA) research. It identifies the central issues on which such research has focused, reviews some of the principal findings which have emerged and explores the implications of such findings for language teaching. The course encourages students to reflect on their own experience as a language learner and to make sense of that experience. Topics include child language acquisition, the nature/nurture debate, errors and learning strategies, the learner’s "internal syllabus," individual learner differences, theories of second language acquisition, communication strategies, and second language teaching.

This course examines how comparisons can be made between languages with respect to their sound systems, lexical-semantic structures, sentence patterns, and pragmatic properties. Through systematic analysis, students gain understanding from research findings in language typology, language universals, and language acquisition. This course focuses on the basic characteristics of English and Chinese, and some salient contrasts between them. The approach is largely descriptive without assuming prior knowledge of theoretical syntax. The course also considers how comparisons between languages may help students associated with problems of translation and language teaching/learning. 

This course presents scientific methods of analysis and develops a better knowledge of grammatical constructions and constraints across languages through linguistic analysis exercises. It also provides a good understanding of the division of "tasks" between the different components of grammar, as well as the link between syntax and morphology on the one hand, and between syntax and semantics on the other.

This course examines basic communication in Hong Kong Sign Language. An emphasis will be placed on the essential grammar of the Hong Kong Sign Language. It also offers a general introduction to the culture and customs of the local Deaf community.

This course enables students to acquire some basics of Hong Kong Sign Language and the general principles for communicating with deaf people in a visual-gestural modality. With different videoed scenarios, students are systematically guided to acquire elementary signing skills for fulfilling basic communication needs in everyday situations. Emphasis will be placed on a range of simple, general-purpose expressions, which allow students to converse with local deaf people, as well as prepare themselves for learning the language further.

This course is an introduction to linguistics. It gives a general knowledge of each area of linguistics drawing from a range of spoken and signed languages. It provides the students who have no previous knowledge of linguistics with a background in core areas of the field – phonetics, phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, and their acquisition. The course is divided in three parts: the first part is an introduction to the field of linguistics, the second part is concerned with the structure of natural languages, and the third part is related to language modality, with particular attention to signed languages and gesture.