Linguistics

This is an independent research course with research arranged between the student and faculty member. The specific research topics vary each term and are described on a special project form for each student. A substantial paper is required. The number of units varies with the student’s project, contact hours, and method of assessment, as defined on the student’s special study project form.

The course incudes the patterns of language use in Southern African, and Botswana in particular, the factors which influence language change and maintenance and the various efforts, both formal and informal, which are beings made in order to preserve, promote, and empower languages. 

The varieties of German differ in the lexis and pronunciation of words as well as in morphology, morphosyntax, syntax, and lexical semantics. In the course of this seminar, we will deal with various such variation phenomena from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective 

This course examines the ways in which language is being (re)formulated on the Web, especially in multilingual settings. The course focuses on the study and management of electronic language evidence on the Web. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

In this course, students look at the interaction between linguistics and the law and more specifically they focus on the face-threatening strategies of deception, manipulation, and aggression. This is a practical course in which students study the ways that linguistics can be applied in non-academic contexts. Students start by examining the role of the linguist as an expert witness in the legal system and in this section they focus on the use of stylistics in investigating disputed authorship, for instance in missing person cases. Students also examine and evaluate research into linguistic markers of deception.

This course aims to develop oral skills and confidence in pronunciation of Samoan vocabulary, speaking and understanding conversational Samoan.

Animals (and even insects) can communicate with each other, but man's way of communication is fundamentally different in that it is greatly facilitated by language, the structure of which seems species-specific. This course concentrates on this part of human language with special reference to its syntax, a set of rules that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. This course thus aims to discover principles that govern this essential aspect of human language and tries to tackle issues such as how child language acquisition takes place and how surface differences among languages may be explained by the notion of parameter.

This course explains that language has a role other than communication. It aims to understand that human language has both diversity and universality. The course discovers areas related to linguistics using comprehensible examples.