Courses

This course investigates the sociolinguistic and background factors upon which a language development program for speakers of vernacular languages may be based. Students learn to work with local people and agencies in designing and implementing a program to effectively meet the needs of specific language groups.

An introduction to literacy work in ethnolinguistic minority groups. This course includes an overview of the elements of a literacy program, including literacy materials development, pre- and post- literacy considerations, learning and 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 provides students with the theoretical tools with which to study meaning at the word and sentence levels, and to explain how people interpret utterances in context. Students will study various models of semantics and pragmatics, and learn how to apply different approaches to the study of meaning in natural language.

This course examines the philosophical basis of human language and communication, with special attention to issues relating to semantics, discourse, lexicon, metaphor, and translation — all the areas that deal with meaning creation. There is a critical review of some major schools of thought within philosophy of language and hermeneutics. These are examined in light of current insights in text linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and integrational linguistics.

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.