ANTH 5401 Linguistic Field Methods

The goal of this course is to get hands-on practice doing linguistic analysis based entirely on data collected from a native speaker of a language. [NOTE: “entirely” means that you should not look up already-published grammars and dictionaries or search the web for descriptions of the language we are working on. For the purposes of this course, we will act as if no grammar or dictionary yet exists.]  We will work collaboratively on the same language for the whole semester. Data collection will begin with phonetic transcription of individual words, with the goal of learning to hear the phonetic detail of an unfamiliar language, and the first assignment will be an analysis of the phonemes of the language, including rules for allophonic variation where relevant. After working out the phonemic system, we will move to analysis of grammar (word structure and phrase/sentence structure), starting with phrases and sentences and going on to a short text. Fulfills the Language Structure requirement for Linguistics majors and graduate students.