| Week |
Month |
Date |
Topic |
Content |
Readings |
Assignments |
| 1 |
April |
4 |
What is (NOT) Language?
(Click for Slides) |
The Scientific Study of Language, Descriptions vs. Prescriptions, Competence vs. Performance, What Language is NOT, Three Definitions of Language, Animal Communication, Design Features of Language, Language Modality |
Textbook Chapters 1 and 14 |
Quiz 1 |
| 6 |
| 2 |
11 |
Phonetics: The Sounds of Language |
Speech sounds, consonants, vowels, suprasegmentals, acoustics |
Textbook Chapter 2 |
Quiz 2 |
| 13 |
| 3 |
18 |
Phonology: Combining Sounds |
Phonotactic constraints, Accents, Phonemes, Allophones, Phonological Rules |
Textbook Chapter 3 |
Quiz 3 |
| 20 |
| 4 |
25 |
Morphology: Making Words |
Morphemes, Derivation, Inflection, Morphological Processes, Morphological Types of Languages, Morphological Structure |
Textbook Chapter 4 |
Quiz 4 |
| 27 |
| 5 |
May |
2 |
Syntax: Making Sentences |
Syntactic Properties, Syntactic Constituency, Syntactic Categories, Phrase Structure Grammars |
Textbook Chapter 5 |
Quiz 5
Scientific Paper 1 |
| 4 |
| 6 |
9 |
Semantics and Pragmatics: The Making of Meaning |
Sense vs. Reference, Compositionality, Context, The Cooperative Principle and Maxims of Conversation |
Textbook Chapters 6 and 7 |
Quiz 6 |
| 11 |
| 7 |
16 |
Child Language Development |
Theories of Language Development, Learning Speech Sounds, Word Learning, Learning a grammar, Bilingual Language Acquisition |
Textbook Chapter 8 |
Quiz 7
Scientific Paper 2 |
| 18 |
| 8 |
23 |
Language and the Mind |
Language in the Brain, Language Disorders, Speech Production, Speech Perception, Sentence Processing, Language and Thought |
Textbook Chapter 9 and Chapter 11 Section 2 |
Quiz 8 |
| 25 |
| 9 |
30 |
Language Variation & Sociolinguistics |
Dialects, Idiolects, Types of Variation, Factors Affecting Variation, Linguistic Identity |
Textbook Chapter 10 |
Scientific Paper 3 |
| June |
1 |
| 10 |
6 |
Language Change + Language and Thought |
Syncrhony vs. Diachrony, Sound Change, Morphological Change, Syntactic Change, Semantic Change
| Textbook Chapter 13 |
|
| 8 |
| Assessment |
| Participation |
10 Points |
Discussion Forum |
10 Points |
Each week, post a relevant and contentful question, a comment, or a response to someone else's question on the week's readings in Canvas Discussions section. 10 discussions (1 per week) each worth 1 point. The teaching staff will decide wehther a post is truly relevant and contentful or not. Example of not contetful comments mainly posted to get the grade: "I agree with you", "I thought about X and it is cool!", "What is the relation between language and sound?", etc. |
| Critical Thinking |
20 Points |
Reading Scientific Papers |
20 Points |
Read 3 very short scientific papers. For one paper, you submit a short one paragraph summary, for another five questions on the content, and for another a map of its main arguments (Argument/Concept Map). More specific instructions can be found by clicking on this link. |
| Analytic Skills |
70 Points |
| Weekly Quizzes |
40 Points |
8 weekly quizzes on Canvas, 5% each. Questions come from the readings of the week and lecture materials. Each quiz has several question-types (covering a specific sub-topic of the week) and the exact questions in that question-type are randomly selected from a bank of questions. You have 10 attempts for each quiz. Your highest grade will be recorded. |
| Final Project |
30 Points |
In groups of 4-5, create a constructed language (conlang) of your own with its unique name. Your conlang should have a well worked-out phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. You will present your project as a poster during our poster session on Friday June 9th. Your poster should include a statement of author contribution. |
| Policies |
| Late Submission |
All quizzes and discussion posts must be submitted by the beginning of finals week. The scientific papers have strict deadlines posted on Canvas. 3% of the grade earned will be deducted for each day the assignment is late, with a maximum penalty of 50%. All late work must be turned in by the Friday before the exam week. This policy can be waived if lateness is due to medical reasons or other special circumstances. |
| Submission Format |
Submit your assignments using Canvas. Quizzes can be found in the Quizzes section. For the scientific papers the instructions are available on Canvs and the assignment can be uploaded and submitted in the Assignments section. If an assignment is handwritten and cannot be determined due to illegibility, no points are assigned to that part. Do not include your name or any identifying information in submitted assignments. In order to avoid grading biases, all grading is done either automatically or anonymously. |
| Grading |
We use the following grading scale:
A+ = 100-97 A = 97-93, A- = 93-90, B+ = 90-87, B = 87-83, B- = 83-80, C+ = 80-77, C = 77-73, C- = 73-70, D+ = 70-67, D = 67-63, D- = 63-60, F = 60-0. |
| Integrity |
We follow the UC Davis code of academic conduct. You are permitted to work together to understand the scientific papers but you must write up and submit your own assignments. You are expected to do the quizzes individually. |
| Accessibility
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Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the UC Davis Student Disability Center. Professional staff will evaluate the request, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare a letter of accommodation for the faculty. Students should contact the SDC as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations.
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| Addressing the Instructor
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I prefer Masoud and he/his/him for pronouns. No titles or last name needed.
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| Philosophy |
| Assessment and Grading |
Our assignments and grading are designed to emphasize "error-driven learning". We want you to make errors, try to figure out what went wrong, correct the errors, and learn that way. This is why you have multiple attempts on quizzes. In this approach you are in the driver's seat and in charge of your own learning. You decide how much you like to learn and what grade is satisfying to you.
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| Participation |
We believe that our class benefits enormously from you sharing your thoughts and questions. Your background, life experiences, knowledge, thoughts, and ideas make you unique, and our classroom diverse. This diversity of perspectives is the foundation of learning in a classroom. At a larger scale and within a scientific community, it is also a major contributor to scientific progress. Therefore, sharing your thoughts and questions can help us learn and build a wider, stronger community of scholars.
Some of you may worry that your classmate's asking questions and sharing ideas may disrupt the class progress. Judging when to ask a question or share an idea is tricky but also part of education. Instead of discouraging it, we would like to practice it together. Here is flowchart that you might find useful. Ultimately, we trust your judgments.
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| Questions |
Ask all and any question you may have! "Stupid questions" are actually the best ones! They help you and I see where something is not clear or something is misunderstood. So if you think your question is stupid, definitely ask it! I bet others have the same question too!
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