TEFL 274
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              SUNY 274 INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS II

 

Lecturer:  Y. Doç. Dr Margaret J-M Sönmez

Office:       B8

(              (0312) 210 40 73

*              margaret@metu.edu.tr

Webpage: http://www.metu.edu.tr/~margaret/

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Welcome to TEFL 274 Introduction to Linguistics II

This course is designed to continue the development of your awareness of language as a system and then to investigate how that system interacts in a rule-based manner with extra-linguistic factors.  We will thus look at Syntax and see how different models of language are used in trying to understand the universals of grammar, then at Morphology and lastly at Sociolinguistics.

Syntax, as you have been told, seeks to describe the way words fit together to form sentences and utterances.  There have been many changes in the way linguists visualize this fundamental aspect of grammar, and in our course we will firstly review some early approaches and then concentrate on Transformational Grammar and the more recent Minimalist approach. 

 Morphology takes our investigation into the smallest meaningful units of language, which are often smaller than words - whatever 'words' are (a difficult definitional problem). We will note the fundamental distinction between inflectional and derivational morphology (remembering that this is also supported by neurolinguistics) and pay attention to word-formation rules and processes.

With Sociolinguistics we come to the issue of the variability of language.  All languages exhibit variation in use, and the types of variation that languages exhibit are many.  In this course we will learn about variation between languages (bilingualism, pidgins, creoles, code-switching) and within languages (regional, social, age and gender varieties, style and style-switching).  Some famous studies will be looked at in detail, with special attention paid to variation in the Englishes of the USA.

I HOPE YOU WILL ENJOY THE COURSE!

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  Classes will comprise two hours of lecture followed by one hour of classwork and discussion.  Students will be expected to prepare for classes with assigned readings and research; Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams, which you used in TEFL 273, remains the main coursebook and other materials will be available on-line, as links on my website or as photocopies. There will be mini-exams at the end of each of the three parts of the course.  Your term grade will be based upon exam scores and classroom performance.  Please note that attendance is mandatory and, as in all METU courses, failure to attend 30% or more of class time results in a fail grade.

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