LING407-17S2 (C) Semester Two 2017

Field Methods

30 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 17 July 2017
End Date: Sunday, 19 November 2017
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Friday, 28 July 2017
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 13 October 2017

Description

A practical introduction to the means by which linguists obtain raw linguistic data from some language and begin the task of describing and analysing its structure.

This course is an introduction to linguistic field methods – the means by which linguists obtain raw linguistic data from some language and begin the task of describing and analysing its structure. The course gives students the opportunity to put into practice and refine what they have previously learned about linguistics. This ‘hands-on’ involvement with analysing a language is a bit like the sort of on-the-job training that is otherwise hard to come by in academic settings, and the students typically find this course an exciting and enriching experience.
Working on a regular basis with a speaker of a language not previously studied by the class participants, students together analyse the phonology, grammar and vocabulary of the language.
Many thanks to the UC College of Arts and all members of the Pacific Working Group for creating an award to support a Pacific language consultant for this course.

Prerequisites: Enrolment is subject to approval of the Programme Director. Students who enrol in this course will usually have completed an undergraduate degree in linguistics.

Learning Outcomes

  • Through their experiences with this course, students will be able to:
  • collaborate with a language consultant to obtain linguistic data at the levels of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics
  • relate to potentially culturally sensitive topics with respect
  • engage in reflective practice to develop and refine successful data elicitation strategies
  • classify and analyse elicited data using methodology appropriate to the different linguistic levels
  • work both independently and collaboratively to understand and solve linguistic problems
  • communicate their findings effectively, both to a linguistic audience and to the local community
  • provide constructive feedback to their peers

    Expectations
    You will get the most out of this course if you regularly attend our class sessions, take an active part in elicitation sessions and class discussions, reflect on your experiences in your elicitation journal, and freely share ideas, data and insights with everybody in the class.sessions and class discussions, and freely share ideas, data and insights with everybody in the class.

Prerequisites

Subject to approval of the Programme Director.

Timetable Note

The scheduling of the sessions for this course depends very much on what times suit our language consultant. It is therefore possible that we will end up using a different time slot to the one advertised in the Course Information System.

Course Coordinator

Heidi Quinn

Lecturer

Viktoria Papp

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage 
Peer review of project draft 20%
Reflective elicitation journal 20%
Research project 50%
Session & data management 10%

Textbooks / Resources

Required Texts

Bowern, Claire,1977-; Linguistic fieldwork : a practical guide ; Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 (There is a 2nd edition available, published in 2015).

Payne, Thomas Edward; Describing morphosyntax : a guide for field linguists ; Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Course links

Library portal
The course outline is available on LEARN (only for students enrolled in this course).
LEARN

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,775.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Language, Social and Political Sciences .

All LING407 Occurrences

  • LING407-17S2 (C) Semester Two 2017
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