Course Description

This course involves a survey of techniques of data collection and analysis based on work with a native speaker of a language unknown to the students. The language to be studied is a West African language.

• Introduction: (a) background knowledge about the language--ethnographic and linguistic information; (b) techniques and problems in data collection; (c) problems in and techniques of observing, impressionistic observation; (d) recording (graphical representations, orthography and IPA impressionistic recording, long-domain, resonance characteristics) (e) interpreting: purpose, general approach to interpreting the segment beyond placed and non-placed features.
• Phonetics and Phonology: the Vowel System of the language; the consonant system; syllable structure; pitch (word and sentence level); words (the simple stem and affixes); and morphophonological processes.
• Nouns: body parts, animal and plant names, kinship nouns (affinal, consanguinal, and collateral), hypocoristic names, abstract nouns, human nouns, count and mass nouns, singular/plural, pronouns (independent/simplex, possessive pronouns and reflexive pronouns), and noun phrases.
• Verbal Morphology--verbal extensions/paradigms (present, past, future, habitual, progressive imperative, optative, reciprocal, passive, causative and reciprocal), inflectional and derivational morphology.
• Sentence Types (Simple, compound and complex)

Evaluation is by written assignments, class presentation, and a final project.