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 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.

An examination of special topics or issues in linguistics that are not covered in depth in other courses.

This course focuses on the question of how speakers of a given language effectively accomplish their communicative goals through the strategic use and shaping of language in both written and oral discourse. Students learn to identify different discourse genres, to chart texts for analysis, to discern hierarchical units within the macrostructure of a text, and to describe features of cohesion and participant reference, as well as identifying strategies in language for establishing the relative prominence of various streams of information. Special attention is paid to the interaction between alternate syntactic forms and their varying pragmatic functions in context.

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.

Discusses foundational principles of translation as cross-linguistic communication, with a focus on minority and minoritized language environments. Students will study the principles involved in understanding a message as originally communicated in one language and cultural setting, and in communicating that message in a very different language and culture. Students will apply theories from different schools of thought regarding communication and the idea of quality in translation.