Welcome to LING/ANTH 106

1
Welcome to LING/ANTH 106

• Instructor Clifton Pye (pyersqr_at_ku.edu)
• Office Hours Wednesday 330-430 pm or by
  appointment
• GTA Jonah Bates

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What is linguistics?

• Linguistics analyzes the structures of languages
• Linguists take languages apart and analyze how
  they work
• Linguists search for regular patterns in language
  structure and function

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Language Patterns

• Linguists look for patterns in language structure
  and language use
• All that glitters is not gold
• ? Gold does not glitter
• Not all that glitters is gold
• All the kings horses and all the kings men
  could not put Humpty together again

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What is linguistics?

• Linguists look for similarities and differences
  between languages
• The main goal is to identify the universal
  features of human languages that enable children
  to learn them

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What are some similarities?

• All spoken languages have a contrast between
  consonants and vowels
• All languages can express an infinite set of
  ideas
• Children can acquire any human language without
  special instruction

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What are some differences?

• Hawaiian has 8 consonants
• Ekoka (!Kung Namibia) has 48 consonants
• Mam (Mayan Guatemala) has no pronouns
• Fijian (Austronesian Fiji) has 135 person forms
• Hixkaryana (Carib Amazon) word order is O V S

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More differences

• Spanish (Romance) verb
• ir-é go-future.1 I will go
• Mohawk (Iroquoian) verb
• u-ts-ya-kwa-nuhst-ru-ko-7
• future-repetitive-1exclusive.agent-plural-corn-set
  -reversive-perfective.aspect
• we will scrape the corn off the cob

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Open Questions in Linguistics

• What is meaning?
• What is the relation between language and
  thought?
• How do we perceive language sounds?
• How are words stored in the brain?
• How do we process sentences?

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Why is linguistics useful?

• Linguists help people communicate
• Linguists help people preserve their language
• Linguists help computers communicate
• Linguists help interpret legal language
• Linguists decipher ancient writing

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What will you learn in this class?

• How to analyze language sounds, words, meanings
  and sentence structure
• How languages change over time
• How language marks your identity

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What do I do?

• I document how children acquire endangered
  languages
• Mam WEN (20.2)
• ke ixh.
• n-chi skweela-n bixh.
• inc-B6 school-IV girl
• The girls are in school.

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What will you do in this class?

• Attendance 10
• Homework exercises 15
• Written exercises 15
• Exams 60
• First exam 15
• Second exam 20
• Final exam 25
• Syllabus pyersqr.org/classes/Ling106