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ENG418/512E: English Linguistics |
| Professor: EMAIL: Office: |
Dr. Sharon Cote cotesa@jmu.edu Keezell 209, Ext. 82510 |
Availability: | I am available during my office hours and by appointment. |
Description: Language is an essential part of who we are as human beings. It has been described as a biological imperative, as a communicative tool, and as an art. We all have extensive and subtle language skills and, indeed, we all have opinions about what is good or bad language. Few of us, however, really understand what language is. This course is a broad survey of the theoretical, the historical, the psychological, the biological, and the sociocultural issues related to human language in general and English in particular. Objectives for this course include the following: for students to become aware of how important the study of human language is to
understanding human cognition, behavior, and society; for students to learn that knowing the "structure" or grammar of a language requires much more than just knowing a set of rules
for good and bad sentences and to understand that the study of language is more than just the
study of grammar; for students to recognize some general types of variation in different human languages; for students to recognize syntax, semantics, phonetics, language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and other subfields of linguistics and to understand basic concepts and issues in these subfields; for students to gain some perpective both on how much has been learned about language and on how many more questions there still are to be answered; for students to be able to apply general linguistic concepts and vocabulary to particular examples and to related fields of research; and for students to have gained a novice ability to read additional linguistic sources and apply the information in these sources to language as they find it in the real world.
Required Materials: Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams (2003). An Introduction to
Language, Eighth Edition. Some additional readings will be made available on Blackboard, and some short readings may be distributed.
Work and Grading: (Graduate Students in ENG512E click here for additional information)
Class Participation (4%), Assignments (12%), critical summaries (12%), Midterm (24%), Research Project(s) (24%), Final Exam (24%).
All work must be completed BEFORE class time on the day it is due and must submitted on time and in-class except in cases where permission for late submission or an alternative submission method is given in advance. (In rare, well-justified circumstances that make it impossible to contact me beforehand, I may consider requests after a due date.) All graded work (except group assignments, if permitted) should be done independently.
You may skip or miss one "ungraded" assignment without affecting your overall grade for assignments. (I suggest you save this option for emergencies or sicknesses, but the choice is yours!) If an assignment is described as "ungraded", this means that while you must both
make an acceptable effort on all parts of the assignment, you won't be penalized for incorrect answers.
A good participation grade requires regular advance reading of materials before the first day on which they are scheduled to be covered, and overall preparation and willingness to ask and answer questions and to contribute to class discussions. Note, too, that tentative test dates (and the final exam date) have already been posted; you should be particularly careful not to schedule anything else for those times.
Of course, all your work for this course is subject to the JMU Honor Code.
If you have any questions about what constitutes plagiarism or about other aspects of the honor code,see me for clarification.
Daily Schedule: (Note that this is a tentative schedule of what will be discussed
in each class period. Changes are possible. Check for revisions.) You should have readings
done before the first class date on which they will be discussed.
| Date | Topic | Text Readings |
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| 8/24 | The Animal that Talks - An introduction to the course | |
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8/26 |
Do Cats Do It? --Characterizing Human Language and Animal Communication |
Chapter 1 |
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8/31 |
Brain and Language |
Chapter 2 |
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9/2 |
Did they tell ghost stories around the first campfire? |
Chapter 2 |
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9/7 |
"Cheating at Scrabble" -- Intro. Morphology |
Chapter 3 |
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9/9 |
Hey, we need a word for that! |
Chapter 3 |
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9/14 |
"Look Mom, I made a sentence." - Intro. to Syntax |
Chapter 4 |
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9/16 |
That's one twisted tree ... and that's not a tree at all! - More Syntax |
Chapter 4 |
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9/21 |
"Do You See What I Mean?" --Semantics |
Chapter 5 |
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9/23 |
Let the "truth" be told --Semantics |
Chapter 5 |
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9/28 |
Meanings within Meanings -- Pragmatics and Discourse |
Chapter 5 |
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9/30 |
"I hereby have a million dollars" - More Pragmatics |
Chapter 5 |
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10/5 |
"Listen Up"-- Phonetics |
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10/7 |
"Sounds okay to me!" |
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10/12 |
catch-up and Review |
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10/14 |
MIDTERM |
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10/19 |
Midterm results plus what your ear knows - a start on Phonology |
Chapter 7 |
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10/21 |
"Not another sound!" -- more Phonology |
Chapter 7 |
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10/26 |
"He said 'Mama'!" -- Language Acquisition |
Chapter 8 |
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10/28 |
"It's all Greek to me." -- second language acquisition |
Chapter 8 |
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11/2 |
"You say PotAYto" - Sociolinguistics |
Chapter 10 |
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11/4 |
"Groovy, Man" - A bit more Sociolinguistics |
Chapters 10 |
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11/9 |
Tops and Bottoms - a look at language processing |
Chapter 9 |
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11/11 |
"Are you real or are you a computer?" -- Processing by man and machine |
Chapter 9 |
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11/16 |
Everything Changes -- Historical Linguistics |
Chapter 11 |
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11/18 |
First cousins and other relations - more historical linguistics |
Chapter 11 |
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11/23 |
THANKSGIVING BREAK -- CLASS NO, TURKEY YES |
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11/25 |
THANKSGIVING BREAK -- CLASS NO, TURKEY YES |
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11/30 |
Presentation Day |
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12/2 |
More Presentations and some Perspective[FINAL DATE TO TURN IN PROJECT PAPERS] |
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12/9 (WEDNESDAY - |
FINAL EXAM: 3:30-5:30, usual classroom |
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"The English language is the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Look here for assignments:
ENG418/512E, FALL 2009, © JMU