Linguistics

This course examines how we use language to perform our own identities, to recognize others' identity performances, and represent identity behaviors in speech and writing. Students read contemporary research and theory in the fields of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology to gain the theoretical tools and research methods for describing and analyzing language behaviors linked to identity. Topics to be covered include language ideology, critical race theory, ethnography, and discourse analysis to enable self-reflection about students' own language attitudes and identity practices. Students produce preliminary ethnographically informed research and writing by collecting and examining original data in this domain. They formulate a relevant research question and use one or more of the following methods of data collection and analysis to answer their question: participant observation, sociolinguistic interview, transcription, discourse analysis, and ethnographic writing. Students report on these analyses in spoken and written English appropriate for the fields of study introduced here. Lectures and tutorials are interactive requiring participation in games and game-derived elements as practice-based research for understanding key course concepts.

This course is an introduction to English Semantics, focusing on the meaning of English words and sentences. It examines the key notions and tools required for semantic research, and explores representative theoretical approaches to natural language meaning, including Formal Semantics and Cognitive Semantics.

This course considers in-depth current issues and topics in second language acquisition and learning such as the role of age; learner differences; theoretical perspectives, and the role of instruction. Current views of second language acquisition and learning are considered critically relative to findings of empirical research.  LED102 Principles of Language Learning and Teaching is a prerequisite for this course.

The course examines language as a system of human communication, focusing on its biological, cognitive, and social foundations. It introduces key concepts in psycholinguistics, pragmatics, language comprehension, and production, and explores how language is processed in the mind and used in social interaction.

The course has two parts: the first consists of presenting the different fields and history of linguistics, as well as certain fundamental concepts and theories in language sciences (structuralism, generativism, functions of language). The second part focuses on traditional grammar, covering topics such as classification into grammatical categories (parts of speech) and grammatical functions, as well as the concepts of simple and complex sentences.

The course an overview of the major languages in the world, the families to which they belong, their structural characteristics and where they are spoken. Different accounts as to why languages resemble or differ from each other regarding grammar and sound systems are taken up and discussed. Explanations as to why the number of languages in the world is fast decreasing through language death are further examined. The course puts emphasis on practical exercises where students are trained in analyzing language structure and placing a language in a typological context on the basis of authentic data.

This is a language course designed to build the communicative competence in oral and written Twi for students who have completed the beginners' course (AFST 001), lived, and immersed themselves in Ghana for a semester. It focuses on the structure of the language as well as the culture of the people. It will improve oral skills, written expression, and listening comprehension. There will be an eight-week classroom lecture (16hrs) and about 28hrs field engagements. Students will witness and participate in; a traditional marriage ceremony, funeral, naming ceremony, going to the market to buy foodstuff and cook, a visit to a chief’s palace. There will be a pre and post-processing of each field engagement.