After an overview of the tribes and cultures of North America, the course concentrates on some of the interesting details of the structure and use of the languages themselves in the immense cultureal variety of aboriginal North America. Examples are different kinds of sound symbolism, counting systems, classificatory verbs, story telling styles, gender-based speech, linguistic taboos, and contact phenomena such as multilingualism, lingua francas, and borrowing between languages. Cultural and Social Context , Shirley Silver and Wick R. Miller. May be repeated for credit. This one credit course, strongly recommended for all linguistics majors and created in response to undergraduate requests, will present the current research of this department's faculty, who will rotate as guest speakers.
Regular attendance is required since the course meets only one hour per week.
Students will be expected to write several short reports on the material presented. A secondary goal is to acquaint students with some of the research on speech behavior, the inferences about it that can be made about speakers' cognitive generalizations about sound structures, and how they relate to theories of phonological structure. Reading assignments and general content are the same for LING 4410 and LING 5410. The term project for LING 4410 is usually a group project that is less demanding than that for LING 5410. In addition, some of the exercise assignments and the take-home final for LING 4410 are less extensive than those for LING 5410.