Study of Language

English 220/Anthropology 204-04

Fall 2009 (Charity Hudley)

DRAFT 08/21/2009

Syllabus information is subject to change at the professors discretion.

Professor: Anne H. Charity Hudley

Email: acharityhudley@wm.edu
Skype: acharityhudley
Phone: (757) 221-3009 (lab); (757) 221-3930 (office) (804) 304-3493 (cell)
Place: Blow Hall 334
Time: Tuesday &Thursday 4:30-6:20pm
Office Hours: Thursdays 12-2pm, and by appointment
Websites:
http://ahchar.people.wm.edu http://www.wm.edu/linguistics/lab/
http://www.wm.edu/blogs/wmblogs/annecharityhudley

Course Objectives:

Study of Language is an introduction to linguistics, the scientific study of human

language. This course will consider languages as structured systems of form and meaning,
with attention also to the biological, psychological, cultural, and social aspects of language
and language use. This section of Study of Language will focus on the relationship between
language and education.

Course Requirements:

Attendance in class and at the school is MANDATORY. Your overall course grade
will be lowered by 5 points for each unexcused absence. Please see professor Charity directly
if you need an excused absence, as proper documentation is required (i.e. from the Dean of
Students, or Health Services). Readings are due on the day that they are listed. Religious and
spiritual related absences will be facilitated. Bring a computer to class if at all possible! If
you do not have a laptop or it is hard to bring, please see me.

Assignments and Grading:

Assignments will be posted on the class wiki at least one week before they are due.
Late assignments will not be graded without a medical excuse. If an assignment is unexcused
and late, you will receive a zero for that assignment. All assignments must be completed to
receive a grade in the class, so even if an assignment is late and receives a zero, you must
turn it in.

Turning in Assignments:
 Most assignments will be due by email Fridays at 10 AM as a .pdf and/or files. The
title of the document should be yourlastname. ENG.220.MMDDYY.doc
(ex: Charity.Hudley.ENG.220.08.30.2007.doc). Typed portions of assignments should
be double spaced in 12 point Times New Roman font with 1-inch margins on all sides. I will
expect you to bring an electronic or paper copy of the assignment to class on the following
Tuesday. You must turn in the electronic copy and the corrected paper or electronic copy to
receive credit for your work. You may work with other people on the assignments, but you
must list everyone that you worked with at the top of your assignment or in the
accompanying email.

Note on Sustainability:

I support sustainability initiatives on the WM campus. To reduce paper use, most of

your course documents (including the syllabus, readings, and most assignments) will be
provided on the course Wiki. Please try to save paper by reading these documents online, if
possible. If you must print out documents, please consider printing double-sided and/or with
two sheets per page. I also encourage you to turn in your assignments electronically when at
all possible. For more information, please see the Sustainability at W&M
website:www.wm.edu/sustainability

Note on Tolerance from teaching tolerance.org:

http://www.tolerance.org/campus/index.jsp

Modified from Tolerance.org's "Declaration of Tolerance"

Tolerance is a personal decision that comes from a belief that every person is a
treasure. I believe that America's diversity is its strength. I also recognize that ignorance,
insensitivity and bigotry can turn that diversity into a source of prejudice and discrimination.

To help keep diversity a wellspring of strength and make America a better place for
all, I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity
or other characteristics are different from my own.

After examining hundreds of cases involving thousands of students, tolerance.org

found this: Although administrators, faculty and staff are vital players in any response, it is
the student activist who makes the most difference.

Because things improve only when people like you take action.

Because each student has the power to make a difference.

And because apathy, in some ways, is as dangerous as hate.

For more information about tolerance and diversity on our campus see:
http://www.wm.edu/about/diversity/index.php
Accommodation for Students with Learning and Physical Differences

http://www.wm.edu/deanofstudents/disable/dsserv.php

Having provided sufficient evidence of a handicapping condition, a student may

make official requests for accommodation through the Disability Services Office. Faculty
and other College officials will then be expected to provide reasonable accommodation(s) in
accordance with official written accommodation statements issued by the Disability
Services Office. Faculty and/or other College officials who do not provide reasonable
accommodation do so with the understanding that they are in direct violation of College
policy. If a professor or other College official does not agree to an accommodation request,
the student should seek intervention through Disability Services. Because the reasonableness
of any individual accommodation request can vary substantially depending upon a student's
current course load, schedule, or course content, accommodation requests must be reviewed
by the Assistant Dean of Students for Disability Services each semester or summer session of
enrollment.

The course textbook and workbook are required. Please bring textbooks to class at
each meeting unless otherwise indicated. You may purchase the paper or online edition of the
texts. If you use the texts online, please bring a laptop to class at each meeting.

Textbook:

Finegan, E. 2008 Fifth Edition. Language: Its Structure and Use. Harcourt Brace

Textbook Website:

http://www.cengage.com:80/cengage/instructor.do?
product_isbn=9781413030556&disciplinenumber=300&codeid=7592&courseid=EN09

Frommer, E. and Finegan, E. 2004. Looking at Languages (Workbook) Fourth Edition.

Workbook website:
http://www.coursesmart.com/9781413030853

Free text supplementary materials:

http://www.heinle.com/cgi-heinle/course_products_hl.pl?
fid=M20b&product_isbn_issn=9781413030556&discipline_number=300&token=

Additional Required readings and handouts in the wiki reading room:

Labov, William. 1987. How I got into linguistics, and what I got out of it.
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/HowIgot.html
OGrady, William. 2005. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, Chapters from Various
Editions: Natural Sign Languages, Language and the Brain

Rayner, K., Foorman, B.R., Perfetti, C.A., Pesetsky, D. & Seidenberg, M.S. (2001). How
psychological science informs the teaching of reading. Psychological science in the public
interest, 2(2), 31-74. A supplement to Psychological Science.

http://www.pitt.edu/~perfetti/PDF/How%20psych%20sci%20informs%20teaching%20of
%20reading-%20Rayner%20et%20al..pdf

Winford, Donald. 2001. Chapter 1. Introduction to Contact Languages. Blackwell.

Grading:

Class (and elsewhere) Participation 15%

Ten Homework Assignments 45%
Midterm Exam 15%
Final Exam 25%

Topics and assignments are subject to change at the discretion of Professor Charity Hudley.
Readings are due on the day that they are listed.

Daily Summary:

August 27: Introduction and Overview Nuts and Bolts of the Course

What is Linguistics? What is grammar? Language Myths & Prescriptive vs. descriptive
accounts of language

Reading:

Familiarize yourself with the textbook and the course website.

Labov, William. 1987. How I got into linguistics, and what I got out of it. Ms.,
University of Pennsylvania. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/HowIgot.html

Pre-class Assignment: Linguistic Autobiography due August 31st at 10 AM.

September 1: What is a language?

Overview of language, animal communication & human language, the human brain &
language development, go over linguistic autobiographies

Reading: Finegan Chapter 1: Languages and Linguistics

September 3: Morphology: The Dictionary in your head
What does it mean to know a word?
Parts of speech, parts of meaning, & vocabulary; morphological systems

Reading: Finegan Chapter 2: Words and Their Parts: Lexicon and Morphology

September 4 Last day to Add/Drop (and change to audit or pass/fail)

September 8: Morphology II: Bordering on the unpossible

morphological organization and analysis

Assignment 1: Intro to Linguistics & Morphology assignment due Friday September 11,
at 10 AM

September 10: Phonetics I: How do you spell that again?

**Bring computers to class to install fonts and other sound software**

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), transcription, articulatory features, and natural

classes: consonants, vowels

Installation of software:
http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/index.asp
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=DoulosSILfont
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/

Reading: Finegan Chapter 3: The Sounds of Languages: Phonetics

Look over and try sounds on:
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/

September 15: Phonetics II

IPA practice, acoustic phonetics and phonetic processes

Assignment 2: Phonetics Homework due Friday September 18, at 8 AM

September 17: Phonology I: How are sounds classified in the mind?

Phonetic Features, phonemes, allophones, syllable structure

Reading: Finegan Chapter 4: Sound Systems of Language: Phonology

September 22: Phonology II

Phonological patterns & structures

**WEDNESDAY September 23- William Labov Lecture at UVA lecturing on
PHONOLOGY! I couldnt have planned it better!(Lectures also on Sept 22 & 24; well make
a class decision on attendance)**

September 24: Phonology III: Morphophonology and Visual Phonology: Sign Language

Reading:
OGrady Chapter 10: Natural Sign Languages &
http://commtechlab.msu.edu/Sites/aslweb/browser.htm

Assignment 3: Phonology assignment due Friday September 25 at 10 AM

September 29: Syntax: How is language structured?

Constituent structure, structural rules and relations, phrase structure rules, &
grammatical relations

Reading: Finegan Chapter 5: The Structure and Function of Phrases and Sentences: Syntax

October 1: Syntax II: The regenerative nature of language structure

Transformations and language variation

Assignment 4: Syntax assignment due Friday October 2 at 10 AM

October 6: Syntax III and Semantics: Sounds to Meaning

Reading: Finegan Chapters 6 &8: The Study of Meaning: Semantics & Information Structure
and Pragmatics

October 8: Semantics, Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis; Midterm Review

How does sound translate to meaning?

Speech acts, Narrative structure

Reading: Finegan Chapter 9: Speech Acts and Conversation

Assignment 5: Semantics/Pragmatics assignment due Friday October 9 at 10 AM

October 13: FALL BREAK!

October 15: IN CLASS closed book midterm

**Semantics/Pragmatics will NOT be on the midterm but will be tested on the final**

October 20: Language Variation and Change: Historical and Sociolinguistics

Language classification & language groupings
Reading: Finegan Chapter 13: Linguistic Change, Language Development, and Language
Acquisition

October 23: Language Variation and Change: Language Reconstruction; Return and go over
Midterm

Reading: Finegan Chapter 14: Historical Development in English

Wherefore art thou English?

Comparative method and types of linguistic change

Assignment 6: Historical Linguistics assignment due Friday October 23 at 10 AM

October 27: Language Variation and Change: Language and its Social Correlates

What do YOU call bubbly drinks?

Dialectology, Regional variation

Reading:
Finegan Chapter 10 Language Variation Across Situations of Use: Register and Styles
Finegan Chapter 11: Language Variation Among Social Groups: Dialects

October 29: PROF CHARITY HUDLEY OUT @ U-Texas Arlington- MOVIE: Do You
Speak American?

Reading: http://www.pbs.org/speak/

October 30 Last Day to Withdraw

Assignment 7: Language Variation Assignment due Friday Oct 30 at 10 AM

November 3: Language Contact

Interaction of social and acquisition

Reading: Winford, Donald. 2001. Introduction to Contact Languages. Blackwell.

November 5: Pidgins and Creoles: The Language You Cry in

Reading: http://newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0053

Hypotheses of Creole formation; Gullah language

Assignment 8: Language Contact Research Assignment due Friday November 6 at 10

AM

November 10: Language and Our Social Worlds

Analyze results of our surveys & present findings from the language contact assignment
November 12: Acquiring First and Second Languages
How children acquire language
Learning a second language

Reading: Finegan Chapter 15: Acquiring First and Second Languages

November 17: Reading and Writing

Types of writing systems
Relationships between speech, reading, and writing

Reading: Finegan Chapter 12: Reading & Writing

Rayner, K., Foorman, B.R., Perfetti, C.A., Pesetsky, D. & Seidenberg, M.S. (2001). How
psychological science informs the teaching of reading. Psychological science in the public
interest, 2(2), 31-74. A supplement to Psychological Science.

http://www.pitt.edu/~perfetti/PDF/How%20psych%20sci%20informs%20teaching%20of
%20reading-%20Rayner%20et%20al..pdf

November 19: Language and the Brain

Speech errors
Aphasias and injuries

Reading: OGrady 13: Brain and Language (on the class wiki)

Assignment 9: Psycholinguistics Assignment Due Friday November 20 at 10 AM

November 24: TUESDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVINGNO CLASS

November 28: THANKSGIVINGNO CLASS

Assignment 10: Linguistic Action Plan Assignment Due Tuesday Dec 1 at 10 AM

December 1: Applied Linguistics: What do we do with all of this? Bring action plans with
you? & Fill out class evaluations

Reading: familiarize yourself with the following

websites:
http://lsadc.org/info/student-resources.cfm
http://linguistlist.org/
http://www.aaanet.org/
www.cal.org
http://www.americandialect.org/
http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/index.asp
http://www.aaal.org/
http://www.asha.org/default.htm

So many sites:
http://www.omniglot.com/links/language.htm

December 3: Final Class: Summary & Exam Review; Class Party

*Bring treats if you would like! *

CUMULATIVE FINAL EXAM: Tuesday Dec 15 from 2-5pm in our regular classroom.
The final exam is closed book.