Course overview
Linguistic Field Methods · Spring 2005


Objective

This course is a hands-on investigation of the linguistic structure of Korean. Students will learn to elicit linguistic data in collaboration with a native-speaking language consultant and then carry out linguistic analyses on the collected data. Over the course of the semester, students will gradually take more reponsibility both for designing and carrying out the elicitation sessions and also for determining the focus and direction of the linguistic analysis.

Prerequisites

Completion of at least one linguistics course beyond Ling 30 (Introduction to Language), or equivalent background. Because a major objective of the course is the development of skills for investigating an unknown language, students with prior knowledge of Korean may not enroll in the course.

Structure of the course

The course meets three days per week (MWF). After an introduction to language structure and language typology during the first two weeks of the course, Mondays and Wednesdays will be data elicitation sessions and Fridays will be discussion and analysis sessions. On elicitation days, students will take turns asking the language consultant to translate English words and phrases into Korean, and to explain the linguistic or social context that is relevant to the language data elicited. The first few weeks of elicitation sessions will be organized by the instructors, but eventually student groups will take over this task in turns. On analysis days, students will come to class prepared to discuss the patterns they have found in the data and how those patterns relate to general themes in linguistic and sociolinguistic theory. Interesting patterns identified and questions raised in analysis sections will determine the direction that subsequent elicitation sessions will take.

Requirements




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