Linguistics students: Explore the structure of a non-Indo-European language!
Japanese language students: Learn to look at Japanese from a linguistic perspective!
What will we cover?
- Phonology, phonetics, and the writing system
What are the sounds of Japanese? How is the language written? - Morphology, syntax, and semantics
What is the structure of words and sentences? How does structure relate to meaning? - Historical linguistics, dialect differences, and and sociolinguistics
What is the history of the Japanese language? How do the modern dialects differ? How do factors like age, gender, status, and politeness affect language use?
What will we work with?
- Overview readings introducing linguistic characteristics of Japanese
- Primary research articles exploring the implications of Japanese for linguistic theory and Universal Grammar
- Hands-on analysis of Japanese language data — some of which you will collect yourself from online materials and other sources
Prerequisites
- Linguistics 101 (Introduction to Language)
- or Japanese 102 (Elementary Japanese II)
- or permission of instructor