Linguistics

This course gives students knowledge of the main processes of phonetic articulation (mode, manner, and place of articulation, airstream mechanisms, voicing, secondary articulations (velarization, palatalization, lip-rounding etc, vowel articulation including backness, height, and roundness, plus a basic understanding of tone and pitch). It also provides students with an understanding of how those processes are used in producing speech sounds, and with an ability to represent different sounds using an international standard (the IPA). In addition, students are able to discriminate sounds aurally, and produce them from IPA script. The course first focuses on the sounds of English before examining sounds that are used in the world's languages. This course is a pre-requisite for the Introduction to Phonology course.

This course explores the research on the processes by which children acquire their first language. It also examines second language acquisition and theories of second language learning.

This course covers applied areas of language use. It consists of a study of language in its social context, of theories of second language acquisition, and of an examination of language in its broader discursive context.

This course examines the phenomenon of written language from a range of perspectives. It begins by exploring the beginnings and historical development of writing, in the process considering the ways in which different writing systems (e.g., word-writing, syllable writing, alphabetic writing) represent different aspects of language. Further points of discussion are drawn from among the following: the debate around the social and individual consequences of literacy; the orthography of English; the mental processes involved in reading; written texts as coherent communicative acts; information structure and flow in written texts; differences between the language of speech and the language of writing; and the relationship between written language and communication technologies.

This course provides a study of the principal aspects of language acquisition, particularly as it relates to the case of second languages, examining the main theories of language acquisition while focusing particularly on English as a first and second language. Topics covered include characteristics of English as a first language, linguistic development, input and interaction, child-directed speech; acquisition of English as a second language, contrastive analysis, sequences of development, pragmatics in second language; influence between languages, the concept of "language transfer," code switching, multilingual speakers.