ENGL 370: English Language Study

Winter 2013

Tu/Th 9:30-11:20 230 CMU

Text

Useful sites:

Overview

This course introduces both basic concepts and issues of current language theory and some tools for representing and analyzing the structures of contemporary English. It covers phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and applications in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, language culture and policy, and historical linguistics. There are numerous links to on-line resources, two of which are tutorials you may find helpful. You should have a look at these as part of your preparation for the days on which they are assigned.

We will go over the exercises for the File (at end of each chapter) on the day the File is assigned to be read. You should have them done at the start of class. I will log this work in at the end of class as "done." You can come up 2 in- or out-of-class assignments short by the end of the Quarter, but each "not done" beyond that will cause .4 to be deducted from the homework/classwork part of your final grade. Late (or "catch-up") homework will not be logged in. This is a "no excuses, no exceptions" policy. This exercise work should prepare you to do similar problems on the midterms and final exam. These test grades will be 60% of your course grade; the project will be worth 20%, and the remaining 20% will reflect the exercise work and class participation.

You should read over the Discussion Questions and Activities for the LF of the day, but the written assignments only involve the Exercises.

Schedule of Topics and Assignments


Date
 Assigned
 Topics
Jan 8th
Aims of Course (LF 1.1)
Jan 10th
Prescriptive/Descriptive (LF 1.3)
Analog/Digital, Discrete sounds (segments) (LF 1.4)
Russell; Phonetic alphabets
Jan 15th
 LF 2.1, 2.2;
Keywords pronounced; audio gif
Practice (but uses monophthong symbols for [eɪ] and [oʊ]) 		IPA for "General American"
Consonants: Place/Manner of Articulation
Saggital sections;  Sammy
Jan 17th
 LF 2.3 (including Supplemental Exs.);
Russell on transcription
LF 2.4, 2.5
LF 2.8; Words for #20 pronounced 		Vowels of NA English;
Begin transcription
Speech sounds of other languages
Suprasegmental Features
Correct transcription →
Jan 22nd
 LF 3.1 Phonotactic Constraints and Foreign Accents
Weinberger's Accent Archive
Jan 24th LF 3.2 Complementary distribution/free variation
Phoneme and Allophone
Jan 29th LF 3.3 Phonological Rules and Processes; Natural Classes
Jan 31th
 LF 4.1;
LF 4.2; 		Midterm (in class)
Begin: Morphology: Inflection/derivation
Feb 5th
 LF: 4.4;
Prefixes, Suffixes, and Roots of English 		Compositionality; Hierarchical structure
Morphology Exercises →
Feb 7th
 LF 5.1; 5.3
Internet Grammar: Word Classes 		Lex Cats/Word Classes/POS
Tests for Constituents
Feb 12th
 LF 5.4;
Internet Grammar: Phrases, Clauses and Sentences
 Phrase Structure Categories
Feb 14th
♥ 		LF 5.5
Internet Grammar: Form & Function, Function in Phrases 		Phrase Structure Trees
Phrase Structure Rules →
Feb 19th
 LF 6.1; 6.2;
Wordnet
Wikipedia: WordNet
Visual Thesaurus frontend
Another Visual Frontend 		Lexical semantics; lexical relations;
4 or 5 ways to represent meaning
Feb 21st
LF 6.3
LF 6.4;
 Compositional Semantics
Insufficiency of TC Semantics
Correct exercises →
Feb 26th
LF 7.1-7.2 Midterm (in class)
Pragmatics: Contexts
Maxims of Cooperative Principle
Feb 28th
 LF: 7.3-7.4
Implicatures, Inferences, Speech Acts exercises →
Extra Credit
Mar 5th LF 10.1-10.4
(exercises 12-15 only) 		Language varieties and social status
Variation in speech style
Mar 7th LF 12.1-5; Language Contact
exercises →
Contact and Borrowing project assigned
Mar 12th LF 13.1-6 Language Change
Exercises→
Mar 14th LF 13.7 Reconstruction
Borrowing Project due
Take Home Final distributed.
Due March 20, my office, 12n.
George Dillon (dillon@u.washington.edu)
Office hrs: Tu 11:30-1 in A404 Padelford
the URL of this document is: courses.washington.edu/englhtml/engl370/370sylW13.html
Last Revised: 2/26/2013