ENGL107

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Survey of English Linguistics

Daily polls  
Sept
03 05
10 12
17 19
24 26
Oct
01 03
08 10
15 17
midterms
29 31
Nov
05 07
12 14
19 21
26 28
Dec
03 05
10 12
finals


  • Professor: Kent Lee
  • Fall 2019
  • Time: Tue/Thu 1st period, 9.00-10.15am
  • Room: 202 서관 (Liberal Arts Building)
  • Office hours: by appointment
  • Syllabus (강의 계획)


1 Overview

1.1 Course description

This is a first-year level introductory course to linguistics, which provides a general overview of the field. Students will learn basics concepts of human language and linguistics, and will explore how the English language is structured and used. This course aims to prepare students for university linguistic courses, improving their language learning skills (e.g., English as a second language), and developing an interest it English linguistics.

1.2 Course objectives

By the end of the semester, students will

  1. Understand basic linguistic terminology;
  2. Understand basic concepts of how human language works;
  3. Understand basic structural aspects of English;
  4. Gain study skills needed for the study of English and other languages.

1.3 Textbook and materials

This might be used as the textbook.

  • Fromkin et al. (2018). An introduction to language. (The book is rather expensive, and the 11th edition is new and hard to get in Korea; I will make an electronic version available via Blackboard, so you do not need to buy this book.)

1.4 Announcements

Assignments
Past announcements
  • Google Form homework: Dialects
  • Short paper #1, due before the midterm
  • Review quiz 1, due before class on 17 October (Note: Due to problems with the form, adjustments will be made to your scores for this quiz.)
  • Midterm exam: in class, 9am, 22 Oct. 9 (Tuesday). Bring your laptop. You can use the Internet, and you can also bring your notes and textbook. You can work in groups of 1-4 people (form your groups with whomever you like, but try for a good mix of people from different countries & language backgrounds).
  • Google Form #2: Minimal pairs quiz; due before class on 01 October
  • A pre-class mini-quiz has been posted. Read the phonology chapter and complete the online quiz form before class on 24 September.

 

2 Weekly topics and assignments

Daily polls  
Sept
03 05
10 12
17 19
24 26
Oct
01 03
08 10
15 17
midterms
29 31
Nov
05 07
12 14
19 21
26 28
Dec
03 05
10 12
finals


Daily polls (right): There is no right or wrong; I just want to know your opinion on these questions. These all add up to a single grade. These are also used to track your class attendance.

2.1 Weeks 1-7

Introduction (Weeks 1-2): Basic concepts
Key concepts
  1. What is language? How does human language differ from (a) computer languages, and (b) animal communication?
  2. What is a language?
  3. What is linguistics? What is it useful for?
  4. Overview of key issues, origins of the field
  5. Common language misconceptions
  6. What is a theory?
  • Prescriptive versus descriptive grammar
  • Language and languages
  • Rules
  • Grammar
Assignments
  • Google Form #1: This is a form to collect basic info and contact info, and to ask you some survey questions.


Lecture materials
Other links


Phonetics & Phonology (Weeks 3-4): Sounds & sound system of language
Key concepts
  1. Articulatory phonetics
  2. Difference between phonetics & phonology
  • Phonetics
  • Phonology
  • Phonemes, minimal pairs, and allophones
  • Vowels & consonants, especially English vowels and English consonants
  • Voicing, manner of articulation, place of articulation
  • Assimilation
  • Syllabus structure (onset, rime, nucleus, coda)
  • It will be helpful to be familiar with phonetics and phonology terms, at least those discussed in the class lectures and in the book, but you do not need to memorize all these terms.
Assignments
  • Pre-class quiz on the phonology chapter. Be sure to read the phonology chapter first (at least the first 50-60% of it) to do this. This requires you to try out and apply what you've read and learned. This is due before class on 24 September. This is worth 25 points, and grading will be based on effort as well as accuracy.[1]
  • Google Form #2: Minimal pairs quiz; due before class on 01 October


Lecture slides & videos
Links
See also
  • Shaw Education videos: These might be good videos for English pronunciation; let me know if you find them useful.
Morphology (Week 5): Words and word formation
Key concepts
Assignments


Lecture slides and video
Links


Semantics (Week 6): Where meaning comes from
Key concepts
  • Compositionality
  • Limitations of traditional semantics
  • Metaphor
  • Semantic change / extension, e.g., grammaticalization, metaphorical extensions, prepositional metaphors
  • Semantic roles / arguments
  • Argument structure (e.g., of verbs, such as unaccusative verbs)
Assignments
See also


Lecture materials
Grammar & syntax (Weeks 7): Word order & sentence structure
Key concepts
  • Verb types, e.g, transitive, intransitive, state & state change, ditransitive / dative
  • Main (independent) & dependent (subordinate) clauses
  • Participles, gerunds
  • Syntactic phrases & constituents
  • How left & right headed constituents can lead to different possible word orders for different sentence elements; this is not explained much in the book, but this was the focus of the last class lecture on syntax and the syntactic structures worksheet.

You do not need to know how to draw syntactic trees or how they work, other than the different possible word order patterns.

Lecture materials
See also


2.2 Midterm (Week 8)

Click 'Expand' to see more.

Before the exam
  • Review quiz 1, due before class on 17 October (Note: Due to problems with the form, adjustments will be made to your scores for this quiz.)
  • Short paper #1, due before the midterm


In-class essay exam

  • Date: 9am, Tuesday, 22 October, in our regular classroom
  • This will be an essay exam. It will test you over main ideas and concepts from the lectures and the book (not minor details), and how well you can apply them.
  • Be sure to bring a laptop for writing, and whatever snacks and drinks you need.
  • You can use your textbook and notes. You can use the Internet for whatever resources you need, but you should not (and do not need to) use any other linguistics research sources.
  • You can work in groups of 1-4 people (form your groups with whomever you like, but try for a good mix of people from different countries & language backgrounds).
  • You will email it to me when finished. Or you can compose it in Google Docs and send it (be sure to make the file shareable, so I can open it).
  • You can use either one of these templates for document layout.
Exam

The exam questions will posted here at 9am on 22 Oct. Bring your laptop. You can use the Internet, and you can also bring your notes and textbook.

 


2.3 Weeks 9-15

Pragmatics (Week 9): Language in context
Key concepts
Lectures
Sociolinguistics (Week 10): Language in society
Key concepts
  • Dialect & standard variety
  • Register
  • Three circle model
  • Linguistic imperialism
Lectures
Videos
Historical & comparative linguistics (Week 11): Language over time
Key concepts
  • Proto-languages
  • Language families, e.g., Indo-European
  • Linguistic status of Korean
  • Historical stages of English
  • Linguistic reconstruction
Lectures
Assignments
Writing systems (Week 12)
Key concepts
  • Orthography
  • Types of writing systems: logographic, abjad, syllabary, abugida, segmental / phonological / alphabetic (including Phoenician based alphabets), phonetic, featural
  • Hangul
  • Reading psychology
  • Phonemic awareness
  • Eye movements in reading (fixations, saccades)
  • Stage model of literacy
Assignments
Lectures
Language acquisition and pedagogy (Week 13)
Key concepts
  • Critical period
  • Neural plasticity
  • L1 and L2 acquisition
  • Bilingualism
  • Phonological, syntactic, & pragmatic development
  • Pedagogical methodologies, e.g., grammar-translation method, Audiolingual Method, communicative & task-based teaching
Lectures
Psycholinguistics (Week 14)
Key concepts
  • Syntactic / structural priming
  • Sentence processing
  • Reading psychology
  • Connectionism, neural networks
  • Cognitive models of language learning
Assignments
Lectures
Psycholinguistics & neurolinguistics (Week 15)
Key concepts
  • Connectionism
  • Neural networks
  • Research methods
  • Theories of language learning
In-class tasks
  1. In-class task #1 (10 points)
Lectures

2.4 Final exam (Week 16)

Essay exam, to do at home. The questions will be posted here on 11 Dec., which is also our last class day. You will have until 20 Dec. to finish your personal essay and turn it in by uploading it to an assignment space on Blackboard.


3 See also

3.1 Videos


3.2 Other links & resources

Additional recommended books
  • Crystal, D. (2002). The English language (2nd ed.). London: Penguin.
  • Language Files, 12th ed., Ohio State Univ. Press.


3.3 References

  1. Various minor assignments have different point values. At the end of the semester, I will add up the point values to calculate one summative grade for minor assignments. For example, if your points add up to 175 out of 195 possible points, that's 175/195 = 89.7.