LING 001 601: Introduction to Linguistics       Fall 2007        Penn CGS
    Instructor:
    Marjorie Pak (mpak at ling.upenn.edu)
    Department of Linguistics
    University of Pennsylvania

    Office hours:
    Tuesdays 4-5:30, and by appointment
    623 Williams Hall (Phonetics Lab)

Class meetings:
Thursdays 6:00-9:00pm
204 Williams Hall
9/6/07-12/13/07 (no class 11/22)

Course homepage:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~mpak/ling1/


Announcements:
  • The final exam will take place on Thursday, 12/13 at 6pm in Williams 204.
  • Review sessions have been scheduled for the following times:
    • Tuesday 12/11, 4:30-5:30pm, Williams 2
    • Wednesday 12/12, 5:00-6:00pm, Williams 2
    You are welcome to attend either, both, or neither. As with the midterm review, these will be Q&A sessions, so bring your questions about past homeworks, exams, readings, and lectures. If you would like to work through some practice exercises together, let me know which particular exercises you're interested in and I'll try to make photocopies ahead of time.

Schedule

Course description: Ling 001 is a general introduction to the scientific study of language structure, history, and use. Topics include notions of 'grammar'; written versus spoken (and signed) language; the structure of sounds, words, sentences, and meanings; language in culture and society; language change over time; language acquisition and processing; and comparison with non-human communication systems. Students will acquire a variety of tools for linguistic analysis, covering phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and discourse. The course has no prerequisites, and satisfies the Natural Science and Math Sector (for students admitted in Fall 2006 and later) or the General Requirement in Living World (for Class of 2009 and prior). It is appropriate for any Penn student interested in language and its use.

Materials: Most of the assigned readings will be included in the course bulkpack, which will be available for purchase from the Campus Copy Center. Additional readings will be distributed in class or made available online. For students interested in doing further background reading, I recommend Jean Aitchison's Language change: progress or decay? (Cambridge), Steven Pinker's The language instinct (HarperCollins), and/or Charles Yang's The infinite gift: how children learn and unlearn the languages of the world (Scribner).

Requirements: Due to the nature of the CGS schedule, we will be covering a lot of new material in each meeting. It is therefore very important that you attend every class and complete the readings and written assignments on time. Active participation in class is expected, and in general there won't be opportunities to make up late or incomplete work (except in case of a genuine medical or personal emergency, in which case you should contact me as soon as you can). There are three kinds of assignments that will be graded:

  1. Homework: Most weeks you will be asked to complete a homework assignment to be submitted at the beginning of the following meeting. Homeworks are designed to give you practice in applying the principles learned in class and are graded on a scale of 0 to 10. You are encouraged to discuss homework problems with other students, but you should write up your assignment independently unless otherwise instructed. We will go over each homework together in class immediately after it's been turned in. This means that late homeworks cannot be accepted (unless you've made prior arrangements with me or there's a genuine emergency). However, your lowest homework/quiz grade will be automatically dropped from the calculation of your final grade at the end of the course.

  2. Exams: There will be an hour-long in-class midterm exam on Thursday, October 25, and a comprehensive final exam on Thursday, December 13 from 6:00-8:00pm. Both exams will consist of short-answer, multiple-choice, matching and fill-in-the-blank questions.

  3. Language journal: This is your opportunity to apply your linguistic knowledge to your everyday life. Each student will collect eight linguistic observations over the course of the semester and write a brief (half-page) analysis of why they are linguistically interesting. For four of the eight observations, you will include some additional analytical discussion (another half-page) that shows how the concepts you have learned in this class help you to understand what is going on. The completed language journal is due at the beginning of class on December 6. You will submit samples for preliminary comments earlier in the semester, as part of the weekly homework assignments.
Grading: Your final grade will be calculated as follows:
    Homework: 40%
    Midterm exam: 20%
    Final exam: 25%
    Language journal: 15%
(Class participation is not a formal component of your grade, but it will be taken into account in determining whether borderline grades are rounded up or not.)

Some links of interest:
SCHEDULE    Check regularly for updates!

September 6
Introduction: Prescriptive and descriptive grammar. Sources of linguistic evidence.
The sounds of language: Phonetic transcription. Place and manner of articulation.
September 13
Phonology: the structure of sounds. Basics in acoustic phonetics.
September 20
Phonology continued. Sociolinguistics and the study of sound variation and change.
  • Reading: Aitchison ch4; Meyerhoff ch3,8 (excerpts); Radford ch3
  • Homework 3

September 27
Word structure. Acquisition of phonology and morphology.
  • Reading: Pinker ch5, O'Grady ch10, Yang ch4-5
  • Homework 4

October 4
Morphology continued. Sentence structure (syntax): constituency and movement.
October 11
Syntax continued.
October 18
Grammaticization. Case studies in reanalysis and language change. Midterm review.
  • Prepare for midterm.

October 25
Midterm exam.
November 1
Compositional semantics and the logic of language.
  • Reading: Gregory ch7-8, Peccei ch2-4 (skim)
  • Homework 8

November 8
Pragmatics and the interpretation of language in context.
  • Reading: Bloomfield, Labov (from bulkpack)
  • Homework 9

November 15
Discourse and narrative structure. Reading and writing.
November 22
No class (Thanksgiving)

November 29
Field methods for linguistic study.
Guest Luganda speaker: Sara Mukasa
  • Finish language journals.

December 6
Language journals due.
Language and the brain (slides). Animal communication.
Exam review (bring questions)
  • Prepare for final exam.

December 13
Final exam.

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page maintained by Marjorie Pak