This is the core package of introductory courses that most students start with; it provides a solid foundation for further advanced study in linguistics, and also is very helpful to people who simply want to live and work in another language community, whether as educators, researchers, community-development workers, or missionaries.
Students have a choice of two phonetics courses, one for spoken languages (Ling 450) and one for signed languages (Ling 455). The other three courses in Package A (Ling 452, 470, and 480) deal with spoken and signed languages in the same class. These courses do not require any background in linguistics.
2 semester hours *every summer*
When learning a spoken language, you have to pay close attention to how words are pronounced. This course introduces you to the sounds used in spoken languages, and trains you to recognize them when you hear them, produce them yourself, write them down, and describe how they’re made. You’ll get intensive practice in using the full International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for the whole range of sounds used in human speech.
2 semester hours *every summer*
When learning a sign language, you have to pay close attention to how signs are produced: the handshapes, locations, movements, facial expressions, etc. This course introduces you to these elements as they are used in sign languages around the world. It trains you to notice them when you seem them, produce them yourself, write them down, and classify them. We teach a notational system called SignWriting which is very useful for research, since it includes symbols for virtually every gesture that is meaningful in any sign language. We also introduce other notational systems that are used for sign language research.
3 semester hours *every summer*
Syntax and Morphology gives you in-depth introduction to the structures used for building words (morphology) and sentences (syntax) in the world’s languages, with intensive practice so you can recognize and analyze them. It draws insights from many different theoretical approaches and thus lays a solid foundation for advanced study at many other schools as well as at UND.
Ling 470: Intro to Sociolinguistics and Language Development
2 semester hours *every summer*
Sociolinguistics looks at the big picture of how language is used in in society—topics like bilingualism, dialect variation, language attitudes, and endangered languages. Our sociolinguistics course focuses especially on multilingual societies, language planning and language development programs. It also shows all the other courses that we offer fit together on the field.
Ling 480: Learner-Directed Second Language Acquisition
3 semester hours *every summer*
Language acquisition—learning a language so you can interact easily with people in their own language—is crucial for many different types of people who work cross-culturally. Besides linguists, it is important for community development workers, educators, missionaries, business people—practically anyone who interacts outside their own language group. Learning how to learn a language is vital, as some methods work much better than others. It’s especially challenging in situations where regular classes, textbooks and other learning resources are unavailable, so you have to be in charge of your own learning. This course presents you with the principles that underlie the best methods, and one method in particular that is designed for learning a language on your own. You get to experience it yourself during the course with a language unlike anything you already know. (The languages that are available during a given summer vary from year to year, and are usually not known more than a couple of weeks prior to the summer session. They generally include languages from Africa, Asia, or native America, and at least one signed language.)
