Ling 530: Phonology I Syllabus Prof. Gene Buckley Fall 2015 TR 1:30–3 616 Williams Hall
go to topics

Description

This course is the first half of a year-long survey of current phonological theory; it is continued in the spring in Ling 531, taught by Rolf Noyer. (Ling 530 can be taken without continuing to the next semester.) Topics to be covered this term include:

• basic concepts in articulatory and acoustic phonetics
• essentials of phonological analysis
• rule- and constraint-based approaches to phonology
• the structure of syllables
• the autosegmental approach to length and related phenomena
• prosodic approaches to templatic morphology
• the metrical analysis of stress

Specific scheduling will be developed as we progress through the term; be sure to check the topics page every week for the latest information.

Textbooks

Xeroxed and electronic readings will be provided during the term. We will not have any required textbooks, but the following books may be useful for reference.

• Michael Kenstowicz. 1994. Phonology in Generative Grammar. Blackwell.
• Rene Kager. 1999. Optimality Theory. Cambridge University Press.

See the topics page for weekly readings.

Homework

Homework assignments will be handed out periodically, often on Thursday to be returned the following Tuesday. You are free to discuss the assignment with others, but you must write up your answer independently and identify your collaborators on your assignment. Normally the corrected homeworks will be returned in the next class session; they are graded on a scale of 0–10.

 Midterm exam

A take-home exam comparable to an extended homework assignment (except no discussion with others!) will be handed out Thursday, October 15 (after fall break) and will be due in class on Thursday, October 22.

Final exam

A take-home final exam will be handed out on the last day of class, December 8. If you have a well defined project, you can substitute a paper (15–20 double-spaced pages); you must submit a paragraph outlining the topic by November 24, after discussing it with me. The default option is the exam, so if you do not have an approved topic by that date you cannot substitute a paper. Either the paper or the completed exam is due as a pdf emailed to me by noon on Friday, December 18.

Grading

The final grade for the course is calculated as follows:

Homework assignments	30%
Midterm exam	20%
Final exam (or paper)	40%
In-class participation	10%

Regular completion of homework assignments is essential. If you have what I consider to be a reasonable excuse, and inform me before the due date, you can submit the homework up to two days late without penalty; otherwise you will lose one point per day late. Except under special circumstances (serious illness, travel to a conference, etc.), late homeworks will not be accepted after the answer sheet has been distributed (usually two days after the homework is due). You will receive a zero for each missing homework and may fail if they become too numerous. No grade of Incomplete will be given simply on the basis of missed homeworks.

Useful links

• Download fonts for the homeworks and other purposes
  • SIL IPA fonts (the closest thing to standard phonetic fonts, available in Unicode; Doulos is similar to Times.)
• Figure out what that language is
  • The Ethnologue (basic information on every language in the world)
• Download papers on Optimality Theory
  • Rutgers Optimality Archive