Linguistics 200
Introduction to Linguistic Thought

Introduction

This class will introduce you to the wonderful world of linguistics. Although there are no prerequisites for this course, the language knowledge you already possess will be one of the most important sources of information you will use.

What does it mean to know a language? How do you know how to frame your thoughts in words so that others can understand what you mean? How do you know the meaning of a sentence you have never heard before? How are you able to break down continuous streams of sound into sentences, phrases, words, and parts of words, without even trying? In this course we will explore all of these questions and many others like them.

The science of linguistics seeks to understand explicitly what every human knows implicitly about language. This course will introduce you to that science and provide you with some tools to better understand what you already know. You will be introduced to the four main areas of linguistic study:

• phonology (the study of speech sounds);
• morphology (the study of word structure);
• semantics (the study of meaning); and
• syntax (the study of sentence structure).

Linguistics is one of academia's most useful and interesting fields. The scientific study of language, both holistically and in minute detail, is becoming more and more relevant in today's society. For example, in the field of medicine, linguistic knowledge has proven to be extremely useful in studying the human brain; and the quest for the "perfect" word processor—speech recognition technology—means that linguists are in high demand in the field of computer technology.

The results of linguistic study also have important applications in and implications for social studies, social work, and education. Indeed, any discipline that relies on diverse sorts of communication can benefit from the study of linguistics. To be a linguist does not mean knowing a great many languages (though many linguists do), but rather to be able to describe and explain any language, using principles common to all languages.

One of the main goals of any introductory survey is to equip you with the "tools of the trade" so that your further study will be more productive and enjoyable, and especially so that the work of others (in this case, other linguists) becomes accessible to you—and your work is accessible to others. The study of linguistics terminology and the way linguists think and solve problems will help you to better communicate your thoughts, both in the field of linguistics and in any other field where the use of language is a concern (in other words, practically every academic and professional pursuit in existence).

Course Goals and Objectives

By the end of this course you will be able to work on linguistic problems (such as the "large questions" of human ability as well as the smaller details), and you will have the tools to present your solutions in a clear manner that other linguists can understand and benefit from. Among other things, you will be able to

• examine data from other languages and explain how those languages work;
• break down sounds, words, and sentences into their respective parts and show how they are related;
• record passages in phonetic transcription; and
• describe how languages develop and change.

About the Online Environment

Your online course offers several advantages to the traditional classroom, including the comprehensive Online Student Handbook, the ability to communicate electronically with students and with your instructor, and links to a rich array of online resources.

Online Student Handbook

This handbook answers questions about your online learning course, such as how to purchase your text, schedule an exam, obtain a transcript, and get technical help if you need it. The handbook also provides additional resources, such as how to order books or journals from the library and how to study for an online course.

Communication with Your Instructor and Student Peers

• Online Discussion Forums, designed by the University of Washington award winning Catalyst team, allow you to communicate with other currently enrolled students and with your instructor. We encourage you to use the forum to exchange ideas, resources, and comments about your course work with other students in this course.
• You can use e-mail to ask me a question or preferably post your question on the forum.

Online Resources

As an online student, you have access to a wealth of Web resources compiled to provide fast, easy access to information that supports your online learning experience. Organized by subjects, Online Resources link you to sites with help for writing and research, study skills, language learning, and library reference materials. All links have been assessed for credibility and reliability, and they are regularly monitored to ensure their usability.

About the Required Materials

You will use two books and one audio tape for this class.

The Textbook

The textbook we will use is An Introduction to Language (7th ed.) by Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina M. Hyams. I chose this text for three reasons.

• First, Fromkin, et al. use many interesting (and often amusing) examples to illustrate their points, helping to make those points clearer and more relevant.
• Second, the holistic nature of their presentation of the various elements of linguistics is well suited to the overall view appropriate to an introductory course. I always like to know how things fit with each other, and this book presents things in that way.
• Third, the excellent glossary and index make this book easily accessible. This book contains much information that we will not have a chance to look at, but you are encouraged to do so if you have the time.

The Workbook

We will also use Looking at Languages: A Workbook in Elementary Linguistics (3rd ed.) by Paul R. Frommer and Edward Finegan, as a source of exercises and graded assignments. The exercises in this book allow you to apply what you have learned by analyzing words and constructions in English and other languages. It is useful as an introduction to the sort of things that linguists do as well as a test of how well you can apply the material you have learned. There is also a good glossary in the back of this workbook.

The Audio CD

We will also be using an audio CD in Lesson Four. This CD has three sections:

• The first section contains spoken examples of the phonetic symbols you will be learning in this lesson.
• The second section contains some short spoken passages which you can practice transcribing. The correct transcriptions are in the answer key at the back of this course guide so you can check your own results.
• The third section contains another short spoken passage, which you will transcribe as part of your assignment for this lesson.

Lessons and Assignments

This course comprises a total of nine lessons: seven "content" lessons (Lessons One through Four, and Six through Eight) and two "preparatory" lessons (Lesson Five prepares you for the midterm and Lesson Nine prepares you for the final). Each of the "content" lessons includes

• a set of reading questions to guide your study of the textbook;
• a list of key words and terms, which you will find either in your text or emphasized by boldface italics in this course guide;
• a set of self-study exercises made up of questions similar to those in the graded assignment, so that you can test your knowledge before doing the assignment.; and
• an assignment that you will turn in to your instructor, comprised of questions drawn from the textbook or the workbook, or that I have made up.

All of the questions (in the exercises and assignments) are designed to help you to master the material from the lesson and to prepare you for the midterm and final. Your answers to these questions vary from prose to diagrams and from single words to short essays.

• Lesson One: The Nature of Language
  This lesson introduces you to the scientific study of language. You will learn what it really means to "know a language" as well as the significance and prevalence of "arbitrariness" in human language.
• Lesson Two: Morphology
  Here you will examine the internal structure of words. You will learn how to analyze the various parts of words and know the significance of each part.
• Lesson Three: Syntax
  In this lesson you will examine the structure of groups of words. You will understand what makes sentences grammatical or ungrammatical; you will be able to scientifically explain syntactically-related phenomena such as ambiguity; and you will be able to break down and diagram sentences and phrases.
• Lesson Four: Phonology—Phonetics and Phonology Proper
  The term "phonology" is often used to mean any study of speech sounds; it acts as a blanket term for phonetics and phonology proper, both of which we will study in this lesson. Both phonetics and phonology involve the study of speech sounds: phonetics is the study of the production and recognition of speech sounds (and the speech sounds themselves), while phonology has more to do with the grammatical aspect of speech sounds. In this lesson you will learn how sounds are produced and recognized, what makes sounds linguistically significant or insignificant, and what features of sounds are linguistically significant. Also, you will learn how to write in phonetic transcription.
• Lesson Five: Preparing for Your Midterm
• Lesson Six: Semantics
  How does the meaning of something you say relate to your choice of words and the order of those words? In this lesson you will learn how to answer these and other questions about the grammatical relation between meaning and form.
• Lesson Seven: Language Change
  You probably already know that English is different today than it was in the times of the King James Bible, Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Beowulf, and you are no doubt aware that other contemporary speakers of English around the world speak different varieties of English than you. How did that come about? Isn't English just English? In this lesson you will examine the reasons and ways language changes over time.
• Lesson Eight: Language Acquisition
  Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to learn a second language, especially if you began after childhood? If it is so difficult for adults, even using sophisticated learning techniques and undergoing rigorous training, how is it that babies learn without seeming to try hard or without being consciously taught? The answer to this question is interesting and enlightening. You will see how the concepts and ideas we have been studying are borne out and illustrated by the process of acquiring language; and you will see the differences between acquisition that begins at different ages, and consider explanations for these differences.
• Lesson Nine: Preparing for Your Final Exam

No division by linguistic disciplines is perfect, as each field tends to encroach on others. In the same way, while I've divided the content of the lessons to make them as discrete as possible, you will often find yourself using what you have learned in previous lessons—and even, on occasion, drawing upon information that will be more fully covered in a subsequent lesson. Indeed, it is a good idea to keep all that you have learned in mind as you go over each lesson; you will find that the more concepts you can link in your mind the more complete an understanding you will have and the better you will perform on the assignments and exams.

Rules for Submitting Assignments

Besides the regular rules for handing in distance learning assignments (see the Online Student Handbook for details), here are a few basic guidelines that I would like you to follow.

• Be sure to include the question with each answer by retyping each question.
• The more white space you can leave, the better. The quality of the feedback on each point is improved by the availability of space next to that point.
• Be sure to retain a copy of every assignment that you send in. This will provide you with security against anything getting lost, and you can use it for studying purposes while the original is being graded.
• After you turn in your first assignment, you may turn in at most two assignments at a time in order to maximize the useful feedback you can receive.

My contact information is on the "About the Instructor" page included in the online course materials.

Assignment Grading

Here are the point values for each assignment, and how the points are distributed for each part of each assignment. Based on the number of points you receive, I will calculate your percentage grade.

Assignment 1 (% out of 50 points)
1	26 points
2	10 points
3	14 points
Assignment 2 (% out of 75 points)
1	16 points
2	27 points
3	22 points
4	10 points
Assignment 3 (% out of 80 points)
1	15 points
2	10 points
3	15 points
4	40 points
Assignment 4 (% out of 175 points)
1	15 points
2	29 points
3	50 points
4	81 points
Assignment 6 (% out of 105 points)
1	16 points
2	14 points
3	50 points
4	10 points
5	15 points
Assignment 7 (% out of 160 points)
1	20 points
2	37 points
3	20 points
4	83 points
Assignment 8 (% out of 25 points)
1	25 points (just one essay question for this part)

Examinations

You will take two proctored examinations: a midterm and a final. The midterm covers Lessons One through Four, and the final is cumulative over Lessons One through Four and Six through Eight. The exams consist solely of questions similar to those you will already have answered in the self-study exercises and graded assignments. To prepare for these exams, be sure that you can answer the questions in the exercises and assignments for each lesson without referring to the text.

You'll find more information on the exams in lessons Five and Nine in this course guide.

Criteria for Grading

• For single-word and short-answer questions, the sole criterion is correctness.
• For longer answers and essays, correctness is also important, but often just as important is the argument you muster to support your answer. One of the main goals of this class is to enable you to approach problems using a wide range of solid linguistic tools and analyses, so it is important to demonstrate your mastery of these.
• Also, spelling, grammaticality, and the various paper-writing conventions (such as proper paragraph construction and paper organization) will come into play in your grades for the longest questions.

Fig. i.1
Midterm	20%
Final Exam	30%
Assignments	50%, divided equally among them (or approximately 7.14286% each, if you want to be technical).

Fig. i.1 shows how your final grade for this course is calculated. The table below shows the scale I will use to calculate your grade point from your percentage grade.

A	100–96		C	76–74
	98–100	4.0		76	2.1
	96–97	3.9		75	2.0
A-	95–92			74	1.9
	95	3.8	C-	73–70
	94	3.7		73	1.8
	93	3.6		72	1.7
	92	3.5		71	1.6
B+	91–89			70	1.5
	91	3.4	D+	66–69
	90	3.3		68–69	1.4
	89	3.2		67	1.3
B	88–85			66	1.2
	88	3.1
	86–87	3.0	D	63–65
	85	2.9		65	1.1
B-	84–80			64	1.0
	84	2.8		63	0.9
	82–83	2.7	D-	60–62
	81	2.6		62	0.8
	80	2.5		60–61	0.7
C+	79–77		E	0–59	0.0
	79	2.4
	78	2.3
	77	2.2

Hints on How to Study

The first part of each lesson is designed to act as a guide for your reading of the text. The reading questions will help you extract the necessary and useful information from the text as you go along.

I suggest you look over the reading questions for each section of the text before you read that section. Then, after you have read the text, look again at the reading questions and make sure that you can answer them before you go on to the next section. You need not hand your answers in, so use these questions as you see fit.

After you complete the assigned readings, look at the practice questions and the assignment. If you have understood the readings you should be able to answer the questions without referring to the text, so keep that in mind for the tests. I expect that you will be doing a lot of text searching in answering the questions (that's what I would do, anyway). You'll find more specific hints on studying certain items in the applicable lessons. Also, be sure to work through the practice problems and check your answers before you do each assignment.

Finally, plan ahead. Use the calendar included in the online course syllabus to schedule your assignments and plan for your exams.

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