University of Konstanz Department of Linguistics

Transcription

1 University of Konstanz Department of Linguistics 1 Bachelor Winter Semester... 3 English Morphology... 3 English Phonetics... 3 Finite-State Morphology... 4 Pragmatics I... 4 Structure and History of English I Summer Semester... 5 English Phonology... 5 English Syntax... Semantics I... Structure and History of English II Master Winter Semester... 8 Core Components of Language A... 8 Core Components of Language B... 8 Further Current Linguistics Methodology (Title may vary)... History of the English Language I (Title may vary)... Language Contact/Language Change/Language Attrition (Title may vary)... Lecture series on multilingualism (Title may vary) Machine Language Processing (Title may vary) Neurolinguistics (Title may vary) Psycholinguistics (Title may vary) Second/Third Language Acquisition (Title may vary) Statistics (Title may vary) Topics in Current Research (Title may vary) Summer Semester Bilingual First Language Acquisition/Heritage Language Acquisition (Title may vary) Computational Semantics (Title may vary) Core Components of Language A Core Components of Language B

2 Experimental Methods (Title may vary) Grammar Development (Title may vary) History of the English Language II (Title may vary) Human Language Processing (Title may vary) Language Acquisition (Title may vary) Language Contact (Title may vary) Psycholinguistic/Neurolinguistic/Clinical Aspects of Multilingualism (Title may vary) Sociolinguistic and Sociological Aspects of Multilingualism (Title may vary)... 1 Structure of English (Title may vary)... 1 Text Processing/Corpus Linguistics (Title may vary)... 1 Topics in Current Research (Title may vary) Varieties of English (Title may vary)

3 1 Bachelor The following courses taught in English will be offered in this or in a similar form regularly by the Department of Linguistics. The course descriptions are therefore exemplary. You can find all courses of the respective semester offered in English in the course catalogue by following this link: seoverviewshow 1.1 Winter Semester English Morphology Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics Course Code: LIN Variable: presentations, examinations and papers required for successful completion of the course are announced at the beginning This course provides an introduction to morphology, the study of the structure of words. We will discuss a number of topics such as the mental lexicon, derivation, compounding, inflection, morphological typology, productivity, and the interface of morphology with syntax and phonology. While the main focus of this class is on English, a number of morphological patterns in other languages will be discussed and analysed to highlight the particular properties of English. The classes will be taught in English. English Phonetics Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics Course Code: LIN-1070 Variable: presentations, examinations and papers required for successful completion of the course are announced at the beginning This course provides an introduction to speech production, speech perception and acoustics. By focusing mostly on aspects particular to English with some glances at other, more general crosslinguistic phenomena, students will learn about the anatomy and physiology of articulation and perception, as well as how to analyse and interpret the component parts of the complex acoustic speech signal. Furthermore, cross-linguistic speech sound classification and transcription via IPA will be addressed. The course will be accompanied by an optional tutorial. 3

4 Finite-State Morphology Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics Course Code: LIN-105 Variable: presentations, examinations and papers required for successful completion of the course are announced at the beginning Finite State methods offer efficient and compact systems which enable the user to encode and analyse the morphology (and syntax) of natural languages. In this seminar we will learn how to encode a morphological component and the associated phonological rules with the Xerox Finite-State Tool (XFST). Participants new to computational linguistics are welcome! Pragmatics I Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics Course Code: LIN-1750 Variable: presentations, examinations and papers required for successful completion of the course are announced at the beginning We usually mean more than we say. When asking the person next to you at the table Can you pass me the salt? we expect that this person actually reaches us the saltshaker instead of just answering Yes (without passing the salt), which is a perfectly good answer (semantically). We often mean more than we say and pragmatics is the field concerned with how we come to understand what speakers really mean. This class provides an introduction to the main topics in pragmatics within linguistics. Amongst other topics, we will explore presuppositions, implicatures, speech acts and information structure. In short, we will be concerned with the study of the meaning of natural language utterances in context and with how context enriches meaning. 4

5 Structure and History of English I LIN Variable: presentations, examinations and papers required for successful completion of the course are announced at the beginning Lecture The introductory course is devoted to the linguistic analysis of modern English. We will examine various levels of the grammar of English: the nature of speech sounds (phonetics), its sound structure (phonology), its word structure including productive word-formation processes (morphology), and its sentence structure (syntax), as well as the interaction among these domains. In addition, we will consider the structure of meaning (semantics) as well as issues related to language use, including pragmatics, language processing, first and second language acquisition, and language in social contexts. SHE-I consists of two hours of lectures plus one two-hour tutorial every week. The classes will be taught in English. Furthermore, depending on the lecturer, the courses Sociolinguistics, Historical Linguistics, and Typology are also potentially taught in English. Please consult the course catalogue in ZEuS at the appropriate time to find additional courses taught in English (late July for the winter semester). 1.2 Summer Semester English Phonology Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics Course Code: LIN-1770 Variable: presentations, examinations and papers required for successful completion of the course are announced at the beginning This course is a descriptive approach to the sounds of English, at the segment level and beyond. The course will first introduce the basic concepts in phonology, such as the physiological processes involved in speech production, and the levels of representation. It will later move on to a description of the consonant and vowel inventories of English with its corresponding features, and how these sounds interact in the form of phonological processes. We will then look into suprasegmental aspects such as syllable and foot, and we will finish with a brief overlook of phonology as a discipline and newer approaches to phonological analysis. 5

6 English Syntax Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics Course Code: LIN Variable: presentations, examinations and papers required for successful completion of the course are announced at the beginning This course is a step-by-step introduction to some of the basic goals and methods of current syntactic theory. We will investigate the main ideas of generative syntax and discuss topics such as phrase structure and constituency, argument structure, and raising and control structures. Semantics I Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics Course Code: LIN Variable: presentations, examinations and papers required for successful completion of the course are announced at the beginning This course introduces the students to the foundations and essential concepts in semantics (Formal Semantics). A procedure will be developed by which the meaning of a complex linguistic unit (e.g., a sentence or a phrase) is derived from the meaning of the single words and their underlying syntactic structure. By examining different aspects of semantic composition, this course provides techniques and formal tools to investigate the empirical properties of natural language.

7 Structure and History of English II Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics Course Code: LIN-1045 Variable: presentations, examinations and papers required for successful completion of the course are announced at the beginning Lecture Structure and History of English (SHE) Part II offered every summer term discusses the linguistic structure and the history of the English language. We will deal with the Indo-European and Germanic ancestors of English, including internal changes as well as historical changes due to language contact. We will also focus on changes in the Middle English and Early Modern English periods, as well as the Modern period right up to the present day. Furthermore, depending on the lecturer, the course "Language acquisition" is also potentially taught in English. Please consult the course catalogue in ZEuS at the appropriate time to find additional courses taught in English (late February for the summer semester). 7

8 2 Master Prerequisite for attending courses is a degree. The following courses taught in English will be offered in this or in a similar form regularly by the Department of Linguistics. The course descriptions are therefore exemplary. You can find all courses of the respective semester offered in English in the course catalogue by following this link: seoverviewshow 2.1 Winter Semester Core Components of Language A LIN This course deals primarily with phonetics, phonology, morphology, and their interfaces. Students become familiar with foundational and current theoretical linguistic analyses and core empirical phenomena and are able to independently pursue research in the chosen core area. Core Components of Language B LIN This course deals primarily with syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and their interfaces. Students become familiar with foundational and current theoretical linguistic analyses and core empirical phenomena and are able to independently pursue research in the chosen core area. 8

9 Further Current Linguistics Methodology (Title may vary) This module unit introduces further linguistic methodology. Topics may vary and include areas such as logic, language documentation or Praat scripting. History of the English Language I (Title may vary) This course focusses on either Old English or on Historical Linguistics with a focus on Indo-European Languages. Language Contact/Language Change/Language Attrition (Title may vary) This course will be concerned with the potential consequences of multilingualism in societies. We will discuss competing models, trying to explain these consequences for language change, language attrition and language loss. The course is designed to give students the opportunity to tackle research articles, approach them critically, and design and present their own research in a scholarly fashion. Furthermore, they will get to know some of the recent theoretical and practical issues in the field of language contact, language change, language attrition or language loss.

10 Lecture series on multilingualism (Title may vary) Lecture This lecture series offers insights into current research on multilingualism. Each lecture series will be dedicated to a specific topic (e.g., multilingualism and language conflict, multilingualism in Romance speaking regions, multilingualism and language attrition). Classes are taught by national and international experts on these topics. Machine Language Processing (Title may vary) Current and classic topics within natural language processing are discussed. This includes speech and text processing and an overview of symbolic and statistical approaches that have been used to build applications such as speech recognition systems, morphological analyzers, part-of-speech taggers, parsers and generators, semantic analysis systems and dialog systems. Neurolinguistics (Title may vary) Current results and methods of neurolinguistic research are discussed and presented in this course. Students read advanced papers and study theoretical frameworks and empirical studies. A particular focus is placed on models of language perception and language production. Hypotheses are developed for targeted research questions and are evaluated via experimental work which includes the design and executionof experiments in group work. 10

11 Psycholinguistics (Title may vary) Current results and methods of psycholinguistic research are discussed and presented in this course. Students become familiar with the intricacies of the research questions and the methodology by conducting similar experiments. A particular focus is placed on reaction time experiments that have been used to investigate child language acquisition and human processing of both text and speech. Second/Third Language Acquisition (Title may vary) The course will discuss competing models -traditional and currentof language acquisition. We study in detail how monolingual and bilingual speakers acquire an additional language after childhood and how a first or second language influences the acquisition of a second or third language. In this course we will pay special attention to the linguistic, psycholinguistic and social aspects of second and/or third language acquisition in a multilingual context, including the role of cross-linguistic influence and the role of age. Statistics (Title may vary) Students are introduced to statistical methodology relevant in particular for understanding language processing research. This includes the analysis of dependent and independent variables, classic parametric and non-parametric tests, single and multifactorial analyses and hierarchical regression models. The course content provides information and methodological competence. Given the current state of the art, it is near to impossible to do meaningful work within language processing without this methodological competence and this course provides the necessary knowledge including the usage of common software packages. 11

12 Topics in Current Research (Title may vary) The course is concerned with specialized topics of current interest. 2.2 Summer Semester Bilingual First Language Acquisition/Heritage Language Acquisition (Title may vary) This course discusses literature relevant to the simultaneous and sequential acquisition of more than one language in childhood. It studies in detail theoretical frameworks and empirical studies that explain how children that grow up with two or more languages acquire grammatical knowledge early in life. Students will learn about the traditional and current research related to how humans learn one or two languages during the first years of life and how their two linguistic systems interact. Computational Semantics (Title may vary) Students are introduced to first order logic as required by semantic processing. They learn how to express first order logic in the programming language Prolog and learn how to build semantic representations compositionally from parsed sentences. They also learn how to build a dialog system and the pitfalls involved in pragmatic and logic processing. 12

13 Core Components of Language A LIN ZEUS-Permalink: This course deals primarily with phonetics, phonology, morphology, and their interfaces. Students become familiar with foundational and current theoretical linguistic analyses and core empirical phenomena and are able to independently pursue research in the chosen core area. Core Components of Language B LIN-1020 ZEUS-Permalink: This course deals primarily with syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and their interfaces. Students become familiar with foundational and current theoretical linguistic analyses and core empirical phenomena and are able to independently pursue research in the chosen core area. Experimental Methods (Title may vary) This course covers quantitative, qualitative, and experimental methods in research on human language processing. Students will be introduced to and familiarized with data elicitation and collection methods and psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic methodology with respect to language production and processing. Students will learn how to design and conduct their own experiment as a result of this course. This course is highly recommended for students pursuing the HLP track as it teaches a core skill relevant for HLP research. 13

14 Grammar Development (Title may vary) The course introduces students to grammar development and teaches students to build a linguistically sophisticated parser and generator for a language of their choice. History of the English Language II (Title may vary) The topics of this course will focus on the linguistic changes after the Norman Conquest, i.e. with Middel English or Early Modern English. Human Language Processing (Title may vary) Current and classic topics within human language processing are discussed. This includes speech perception, speech production and language acquisition. Results and insights from both psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics are considered. At the end of the course, students should be knowledgeable about foundational research and current debates within human language processing. 14

15 Language Acquisition (Title may vary) The course examines foundational and current language acquisition research, including results from multilingual acquisition. Students will read and discuss seminal papers. They will be familiarized with theoretical frameworks as well as empirical approaches. Language Contact (Title may vary) Changing topics. Psycholinguistic/Neurolinguistic/Clinical Aspects of Multilingualism (Title may vary) This course looks at issues central to the understanding of the complex nature of the multilingual mind and how the multilingual language user represents and processes linguistic information in the brain. Other aspects include the specifics of normal and impaired multilingual language acquisition and attrition. 15

16 Sociolinguistic and Sociological Aspects of Multilingualism (Title may vary) The course discusses literature relevant to sociolinguistic research, focussing on multilingualism. Students will be introduced to and familiarized with data elicitation and collection methods in sociolinguistic research on multilingual societies. They learn how to analyse data by identifying research problems, formulating hypotheses and validating them. Structure of English (Title may vary) Changing topics. Text Processing/Corpus Linguistics (Title may vary) In this course students learn how to extract linguistic information from a text/corpus via a programming language that is particularly suited for this task (e.g., Perl or Python). Students learn programming skills and apply these towards working with text language corpora. At the end of the course, students are able to write programs independently and extract relevant information from a text/corpus in order to solve a research question. This course is highly recommended for students pursuing the MLP track as it teaches a core skill relevant for MLP research. 1

17 Topics in Current Research (Title may vary) The course is concerned with specialized topics of current interest. Varieties of English (Title may vary) In this course students will learn about different varieties of English around the world. We will discuss distinctive linguistic features (phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic) of a number of regional Englishes spoken today in Britain, the United States, Asia and the Caribbean. These varieties of English will also be embedded in a broader context by discussing how they emerged historically. Moreover, we will reflect on theoretical frameworks and research methods applied in the field of World Englishes. 17