Linguistics

This course is a general overview of the interactions of language and other higher mental functions, such as pattern recognition and problem solving. In particular, it goes through solving various types of linguistic puzzles, and facilitate understanding of how knowledge of language and general reasoning interact in the process of problem-solving. Through this course, students are expected to achieve the basic understanding of the logical structure as encoded in natural languages, and to gain practical experience through hands-on practice with the real data. Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics.

How do we acquire language? How are we to interpret the fact that language use varies according to geography, social class, gender, and context? Why do languages die? What is the impact of immigration on language attitudes, language acquisition, and language transmission? This course attempts to provide the beginnings of answers to such questions, as well as many others relating to language, the individual, and society.

This course provides an introduction to regional variation in the English language. The course is divided between an overview of the types of variation found and a practical part in which students have the opportunity to explore an aspect of variation and/or change in an original research project. The first part discusses aspects of accent variation, looking at major parameters of phonological differences and introducing some key accents in greater detail, and also explores grammatical and lexical differences between different regional varieties. Attention is also given to "new" Englishes and creoles and their phonological, lexical and grammatical features. The second part provides students with the tools to conduct their own empirical analysis, including methods of data collection and an introduction to phonetic analysis software.

The extensive independent study field research paper produced by the student is both the centerpiece of the intern's professional engagement and the culmination of the academic achievements of the semester. During the preparatory session, IFE teaches the methodological guidelines and principles to which students are expected to adhere in the development of their written research. Students work individually with a research advisor from their field. The first task is to identify a topic, following guidelines established by IFE for research topic choice. The subject must be tied in a useful and complementary way to the student-intern's responsibilities, as well as to the core concerns of the host organization. The research question should be designed to draw as much as possible on resources available to the intern via the internship (data, documents, interviews, observations, seminars and the like). Students begin to focus on this project after the first 2-3 weeks on the internship. Each internship agreement signed with an organization makes explicit mention of this program requirement, and this is the culminating element of their semester. Once the topic is identified, students meet individually, as regularly as they wish, with their IFE research advisor to generate a research question from the topic, develop an outline, identify sources and research methods, and discuss drafts submitted by the student. The research advisor also helps students prepare for the oral defense of their work which takes place a month before the end of the program and the due date of the paper. The purpose of this exercise is to help students evaluate their progress and diagnose the weak points in their outline and arguments. Rather than an extraneous burden added to the intern's other duties, the field research project grows out of the internship through a useful and rewarding synergy of internship and research. The Field Study and Internship model results in well-trained student-interns fully engaged in mission-driven internships in their field, while exploring a critical problem guided by an experienced research advisor.

Pragmatics is the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions in context (linguistic and otherwise). Speakers of any language need to grasp different kinds of meaning other than the so-called “literal” one (i.e. propositional meaning) to express what they wish to convey. Pragmatics is also necessary to understand what other people have said or written. Most of the time, people perform this task without much effort, but explicating how it is done is no simple task. This course explores how meaning interacts with structure.
 

The course addresses meanings of the predicate (including thematic roles); functions of nominal expressions (including deixis); politeness, and viewpoint. The special focus is on expressive meanings. Some of these issues are universally found whilst others are salient only in certain languages. 
 
Students who enroll in this course must understand basic concepts in theoretical linguistics. If most students have not taken a pragmatics course, the first few classes will be spent discussing basic concepts in syntax and morphology so that they can later explore multifaceted aspects of "meaning" and apply them for analyses of actual language use.