Linguistics and Language Development Course Information
EDUB 656 Linguistics and Language Development
Course Description
In this course, candidates undertake the scientific study of language through an analysis of phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Candidates develop strategies and techniques to improve their students’ understandings of sound-letter correspondence, letter-word formation, word patterns, sentence structure, and discourse levels. The course also includes a study of the history of the English language and other linguistic family trees.
Week 1
Lecture: Human Evolution and Linguistic Diversity
Outcomes
- Examine why and how the human species is unique in terms of its language capabilities
- Understand that languages constantly change across time and space
- Examine how languages are contrasted with each other in order to find genetic traces that lead to linguistic trees
Week 2
Lecture: History of the English Language
Outcomes
- Learn that English belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Proto-Indo-European language
- Examine the effect of borrowing words from other languages such as French and Latin on the English language
- Analyze how the English language changed from the Old English in Beowulf, to the Middle English of Chaucer and Shakespeare and the Modern English of today
- Distinguish the inflectional nature of Old English from the analytical nature of Modern English
- Understand why word order plays a strong role in Modern English
Week 3
Lecture: Phonetics
Outcomes
- Examine the range of sounds within the English language, where they are produced, and how they are produced
- Understand that consonant sounds are very different from vowel sounds
- Determine how the place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing all affect the type of human sounds produced
Week 4
Lecture: Phonology
Outcomes
- Understand that a phoneme is a unit in the sound system and that two words can differ minimally by having a single pair of different phonemes
- Examine how languages use allophones to distinguish the sounds of words as well as their meanings
- Examine the various phonological rules in English that can help an ELL student to decode the surface form of a word
- Examine the unique characteristics of the English language such as its phonotactic constraints, stress patterns, and syllabic structure
Week 5
Lecture: Lexicon and Morphology
Outcomes
- Define lexicon as the set of words within a language and their various categories
- Examine how adding morphemes to words can sometimes change the category or classification of the word and its meaning
- Realize that languages can be expanded in terms of number of words by manipulating morphemes
Week 6
Lecture: Syntax
Outcomes
- Define syntax as the rules that govern the formation of sentences
- Understand that English has the ability to string together an infinite number of phrases at the end of sentences
- Apply phrase-structure rules that determine the relationship between phrases and sentences
Week 7
Lecture: Semantics
Outcomes
- Define semantics as the study of meaning in language
- Identify the various relationships among word meanings through a focus on lexical semantics
- Examine nine different semantic roles and understand the relationship between semantic roles and grammatical relations
Week 8
Lecture: Speech and Writing
Outcomes
- Examine the characteristics of speech acts and conversation
- Recognize that culture-specific conversational norms can affect communication
- Examine the various writing systems in use today
- Define orthography as the system that dictates how the letters of the alphabet are used to represent the phonemes of a language
The course description, objectives and learning outcomes are subject to change without notice based on enhancements made to the course. October 2011
