Semantic Investigations in an Unfamiliar Language: American Sign Language

Graduate / Professional

This course introduces students to semantic fieldwork. It chooses a language that is likely not known to any student in the class and has no substantive semantic literature. Students are introduced to a phenomenon in the language on which there is some syntactic literature, either in that language or in one or more related languages. This provides a starting point for students to articulate questions to investigate that are primarily semantic in nature. Working with a native speaker consultant, students elicit data that answer these initial questions but very likely lead to further questions to investigate. To keep the elicitation focused, these investigations are restricted to topics related to the primary phenomenon discussed, while allowing some margin for individual interests. In addition to the syntactic and semantic literature on the chosen topic or topics, students also read material on fieldwork methodologies for linguistics generally as well as those specifically for semantics. Students work in small groups to fulfill part of the requirements. The language to be investigated this semester is American Sign Language. Prerequisites: LING 653 and LING 663 or permission of the instructor. M 9:25am-11:20am