Ling-001-601, Fall 2007
Assignments for Week 8
In this week's class (November 1) we will be starting a new unit on
semantics and pragmatics. Please do the following readings from your
bulkpack:
- Gregory chapters 2-3 (you can stop reading on p. 19 after the paragraph
that ends with trustingly)
- Peccei chapter 1
These readings are very short but you may find them somewhat dense and
technical. Don't get too bogged down with them; we'll go over this
material together in class.
Midterm Course Evaluations
I like to give my students a chance to provide feedback to me
midway through the semester, instead of waiting until the end. If you'd
like to fill out a midterm course evaluation, here is the form. These evaluations are
completely voluntary and anonymous. Please follow the instructions
carefully and don't provide any information that would allow yourself to be
identified.
Homework 7, due November 1 at the beginning
of class.
This homework assignment is voluntary. What this means is
that if you turn in this homework, I will drop your two lowest
homeworks at the end of the semester and calculate your grade based on your
top 8 out of 10 submitted homeworks. If you don't turn in this homework, I
will drop your single lowest homework and calculate your grade based on
your top 8 out of 9 submitted homeworks. Even if you decide not to submit
this homework, I encourage you to turn in a sample journal entry (see Part
2 below) some time in the near future so that I can give you initial
feedback.
Part 1. Do the following exercises from the readings (2 points
each):
- Exercise 1.9 from Peccei (p. 6)
- Exercise 1.11, number (c) only from Peccei (p. 11). Note that when they say 'provide three
alternatives for the underlined utterance' they just mean three different
ways you could have said it. For example, one alternative to I'm on a
diet in (a) could be simply No, thanks.
- Exercise 3.12 numbers (b) and (d) only from Gregory (p. 20-21).
Write 2-3 sentences for each example.
Extra credit (up to 2 points): Do exercises 3.13 and 3.14 from
the Gregory reading (p. 21)
Part 2: Sample language journal entry. (4
points). In several of the earlier homeworks, you were asked to provide
relevant linguistic examples of your own and comment briefly on them. These
exercises were designed to get you started on your language journal due at
the end of the semester. You may have been collecting additional examples
of your own; if not, now's an excellent time to start.
For this week, I'd like you to take one of your linguistic
observations and write a 1-page commentary and analysis of it. In
other words, write a sample long entry for your final
language journal. Remember that the main point of the language journal
is for you to apply what you've learned in this class to the language you
observe around you - so do your best to incorporate some of the formal
concepts, terms, and analytical techniques you've learned in this class to
the example you discuss here.
Your example can be from any language, including signed language, as long as you provide
translations. It can be spoken/signed or written, and it can relate to
any of the areas we've discussed so far in class (linguistic
misconceptions, pronunciation and sound
structure, word structure, sentence structure, ambiguity, acquisition
errors, dialect differences, etc...)
Here are some sample language journal entries that I wrote when I took the
equivalent of Ling-001 many years ago: long
entry | short entry 1 | short entry 2. They'll give you an idea of how
much detail is expected in your comments and analysis.
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