Courses

This course covers methods used in the introduction of literacy to ethno-linguistic minority groups. It includes orthography design, consideration of socio-historical issues, strategies for literacy programs, stimulation of local authorship, reading theory, and instructional methodologies.

This course covers the process of translating from a source language to a target language. Students will develop skill in understanding a message as originally communicated in one language and cultural setting, and in communicating essentially that message in a very different language and culture. Discussion includes: source language, target language, and cross-language transfer, with particular attention to the translation of Scripture.

This course introduces students to advanced concepts of phonological theory. Employing the theoretical models they are learning, students develop a clearer understanding of the typological behavior of phonological systems by analyzing data from a variety of languages.

Provides a theoretical and practical basis for analyzing the semantics of the lexicon, managing a lexical database and producing dictionaries for a variety of audiences including the local community, translators and linguists.

This course teaches students how to prepare basic pedagogical materials and early readers in languages that may not have a long written tradition. Special emphasis is given to teaching techniques for involving the local language community in the production of these materials.

This course introduces students to a wide range of linguistic theories. Students read and discuss original works written from various perspectives and gain in the process a clearer appreciation for the range of views that exist concerning the nature of human language and its syntactic, semantic, phonological, and discourse properties.

An article based course providing an in-depth exploration of current issues in the linguistic subfields of Morphology and Syntax. The types of topics addressed include: wordhood, clitics, grammatical relations, voice, valence, transitivity, noun incorporation, control constructions, raising, reflexivity & reciprocalization, complementation, evidentiality, secondary predication, and iconicity & economy. Students apply the acquired knowledge in producing a major paper.

In this course, students transcribe, organize, and analyze language data and prepare a written description of phonological, morphosyntactic, or discourse features of the language. The course focuses on applying effective fieldwork methodologies.

This course develops skills in academic writing for linguistics, including articles, abstracts, theses, books, etc.