Fall 2003

Linguistics 55

Rosemary's home page

Course description

Syllabus

Final review sheet

I will have office hours/more review tomorrow before the final from 3-4. I'll be in my office in 1305 but if multiple people show up we'll move down the hall to 1202 Dwinelle.

Assignments

• Linguistic autobiography or interview
• Naming practices assignment
• Hedging homework (due Monday 6/14)
• Extra credit event assignment
• Group project

Possible events for extra credit assignment:

• Slam poetry in Berkeley
• La Peña Cultural Center
• Deaf events

Here's what kinds of criteria I grade the projects on

Week 1

Lecture notes

• Linguistics is descriptive not prescriptive
• Phonetic symbols
• Linguistic reconstruction & Language families
• (Proto-)Indo-European
• History of English

Reading

• Link to Sounds of the World's Languages
• Link to the Ethnologue
• Link to the Phonological Atlas of North America
• Link to the Dictionary of American Regional English Be sure to check out the audio samples.
• Link to the Accent Archive (recommended, not required). Select Accent Atlas from the drop down menu and click on the dots in the USA and elsewhere to hear the passage.
• Start reading Spoken Soul even though the annotations aren't due until next week.

Week 2

Lecture notes

• Regionalects
• Sociolects
• African American English

Reading

• Spoken Soul: parts 1-5 (5 annotations).
• Link to the US Census

Week 3

Lecture notes

• Slang
• Language and Gender (& Sex & Sexuality)
• Language Policy
• Midterm review sheet. Besides what's on here, there may be questions about the reading.

Reading

• An excellent example of a group project from the Fall semester
• Link to James Crawford's website about official English and Language politics in the US
• Start reading Flutes of Fire even though the annotations aren't due until next week.

Week 4

Lecture notes

• Cool features of Native American Languages
• Native American Origins
• Sound symboism
• Miami language revitalization
• Practical orthographies & Native (North) American writing

Reading

• Flutes of Fire: Read the Introductory section and all of Parts I-V (6 annotations)
• Link to Sounds of the World's Animals
• Link to page about Maya glyphs
• The Myaamia Project (be sure to look at the different sections under "background mission"
• The Miami Nation homepage (not required)
• NAGPRA text (not required)
• Another good NAGPRA website (not required)

Week 5

Lecture notes

• Mesoamerican writing systems
• Bilingualism
• Germanic languages in America
• French in America
• Spanish in America(s)
• Chinese languages

Reading

• Why don’t they learn English?,Chapters 1-5 (5 annotations
• Annotate two sources that you are considering using for your group project. If more than one group member annotates the same reading, make sure to write up your annotations separately and in your own words. If each group member annotates two different sources this will mean a bigger and better bibliography for your paper! In your paper you may recycle some of what you write in your annotations.
• Link to article on Yiddish (required)
• Link to Michif website
• Link to page on Cajun French (scroll down and browse some of the cajun words and phrases
• Link to page on Plattdietsch (recommended, not required)

Week 6

Lecture notes

• Naming practices
• Japanese
• Korean
• ASL

Reading

• Link to Kwan Generation Name Poem---click on "chart" to find links to the translation and links to mp3 recordings of the poem in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Toisaanwa)
• Link to source on African American naming practices
• Arabic language website
• Vietnamese language website
• Tagalog language website
• Annotate 3 other websites of your choice that deal with languages or linguistic issues (if you show me some good ones I may require your recommended websites in a future version of this course)
• Link to the Klingon Language Institute
• Mandarin tones (recommended)
• Cantonese tones (recommended)