This course provides instruction and practice in primary linguistic research, combining study of reference materials and work with a native-speaker consultant. The emphasis is on quickly building a grammatical sketch and a lexicon adequate to support further research. Despite what the course register says, there are no prerequisites beyond a basic knowledge of linguistic terminology and a willingness to do the course work.
Students will do a term project investigating some phenomenon
in the language studied, which in spring 1998 will be Somali.
For all students, the first goal is to learn to "get up to speed" on a
new language quickly, as well as to gain detailed practical experience
in the characteristics of the particular language studied. For advanced
students, another key goal is to create data for a research project in
some area of linguistics, and to write up at least a preliminary version
of such a project.
| Day | Time | Type |
| Tuesday | 12:00-1:30 | Plenary |
| Tuesday | 1:30-3:00 | Individual |
| Thursday | 10:30-12:00 | Individual |
| Thursday | 12:00-1:30 | Plenary |
The first couple of weeks will consist of a quick survey
of the language, including basic ear training and the use of the standard
orthography, the basics of inflection and derivation, and basic sentence
structure.
|
|
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| 1. Tues., Jan. 20 | Read (web pages):
General information about Somali Somali writing system Noun morphology in standard Somali The "ATR" feature in Somali vowels |
| 2. Thurs. Jan. 22 | Read (web pages):
Pronouns Preverbal particles Do: Morphological exercise 1 |
| 3. Tues. Jan. 27 | Read: Saeed chapter on verbs
(handed out in class) Do: Morphological exercise 2 |
| 4. Tues. Feb. 3 | Do: Transcription
exercise 1
|
| 5. Tues. Feb. 17 | Read: Saeed chapters on clause structure
Do: Make your project web page, based on the template |