Back
Semester | fall semester 2017 |
Course frequency | Once only |
Lecturers | John Nerbonne (john.nerbonne@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
Content | Although many studies aim to understand linguistic differences (and their extra-linguistic correlates), most of them get bogged down in examining one feature at a time, and concluding that the varieties in question are the same or different. As the great Uriel Weinreich put it (1968:63), in examining languages in contact: No easy way of measuring or characterizing the total impact of one language on another in the speech of bilinguals has been, or probably can be devised. The only possible procedure is to describe the various forms of interference and to tabulate their frequency. Contact linguistics is one of the areas is thus one area that might benefit from more general methods for measuring linguistic differences, and others include dialectology (including the study of accents and their intelligibility), historical linguistics, second- and foreign language learning, and linguistic pathology (the study of aphasia but also disorders such as poor hearing, dyslexia, or dysarthria). This course aims to motivate the study of more general techniques for measuring language differences, development the requirements for candidate measures, and finally to examine several case studies. The work will include some practical work on PCs (laptops) using R (R-Project) and Gabmap, but there are no prerequisites. Schedule Meetings: Wed. 12:00-16:00 with short breaks Oct. 04 Motivation in various linguistic subfields. Oct. 11 Measurement theory, sampling, consistency, validity. Read Wikipedia article on psychometrics. Oct. 18 Dialectometry & categorical differences. Read Goebl (2006 or similar) article, basics Oct. 25 Analyzing simple differences, refining them. Read Nerbonne & Kleiweg, 2003 Nov. 1 Pronunciation differences, Dialectology. Read Nerbonne & Heeringa, 2010. Nov. 8 Language disorders, accents in 2nd languages; Sanders & Chin (2009); Wieling et al. (2014) Nov. 29 Written exam and final discussion |
Learning objectives | At the end of the course, students should be able to examine proposed measures of linguistic differences and critique them with respect to representativeness, consistency and validity of various sorts. They should similarly be able to read and criticize literature using measures of differences and/or similarities. |
Bibliography | Goebl, Hans. (2006). Recent advances in Salzburg dialectometry. Literary and linguistic computing, 21(4), 411-435. Gooskens, Charlotte. (2013). “Experimental Methods for Measuring Intelligibility of Closely Related Language Varieties" In: Robert Bayley, Richard Cameron, and Ceil Lucas (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Oxford Handbooks Online. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/956c/c2472803889c3236d2ce10c1bb3ae4931456.pdf Nerbonne, John, and Wilbert Heeringa. (2010) "Measuring dialect differences." In: J.E. Schmidt and P. Auer (eds.) Language and Space: Theories and Methods. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. 550-566. Nerbonne, John, Rinke Colen, Charlotte Gooskens, Peter Kleiweg and Therese Leinonen (2011). Gabmap – a web application for dialectology. Dialectologia: revista electrònica, 65-89. See also http://www.gabmap.nl Nerbonne, John, and Peter Kleiweg. (2003). "Lexical distance in LAMSAS." Computers and the Humanities 37.3: 339-357. R-Project “The R-project for statistical computing” https://www.r-project.org/ Sanders, Nathan C. & Steven B. Chin (2009). “Phonological Distance Measures”, Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 16:1: 96-114. DOI: 10.1080/09296170802514138 Wikipedia “Psychometrics” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometrics. See especially the section on “Key Concepts”. Wieling, Martijn, Jelke Bloem, R. Harald Baayen, and John Nerbonne. (2015). "Determinants of English accents." Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics. https://publikationen.uni-tuebingen.de/xmlui/handle/10900/67208 |
Comments | Schedule Meetings: Wed. 12:00-16:00 with short breaks Oct. 04 Motivation in various linguistic subfields. Oct. 11 Measurement theory, sampling, consistency, validity. Read Wikipedia article on psychometrics. Oct. 18 Dialectometry & categorical differences. Read Goebl (2006 or similar) article, basics Oct. 25 Analyzing simple differences, refining them. Read Nerbonne & Kleiweg, 2003 Nov. 1 Pronunciation differences, Dialectology. Read Nerbonne & Heeringa, 2010. Nov. 8 Language disorders, accents in 2nd languages; Sanders & Chin (2009); Wieling et al. (2014) Nov. 29 Written exam and final discussion |
Language of instruction | German |
Use of digital media | No specific media used |
Course auditors welcome |
Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
---|
No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
Modules |
Modul Advanced English Linguistics (Bachelor's degree subject: English) Modul Deutsche Sprachwissenschaft (Master's degree subject: German Language and Literature) Modul Deutsche Sprachwissenschaft I (Master's degree subject: German Language and Literature (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul Deutsche Sprachwissenschaft II (Master's degree subject: German Language and Literature (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul English Linguistics (Master's degree subject: English) Modul Forschungspraxis und Vertiefung (Master's degree program: Language and Communication) Modul Interphilologie: Sprachwissenschaft MA (Master's degree subject: English) Modul Interphilologie: Sprachwissenschaft MA (Master's degree subject: Italian Language and Literature) Modul Interphilologie: Sprachwissenschaft MA (Master's degree subject: Latin Philology) Modul Interphilologie: Sprachwissenschaft MA (Master's degree subject: German Language and Literature) Modul Interphilologie: Sprachwissenschaft MA (Master's degree subject: Spanish Language and Literature) Modul Interphilologie: Sprachwissenschaft MA (Master's degree subject: Nordic Philology) Modul Interphilologie: Sprachwissenschaft MA (Master's degree subject: Slavic Studies) Modul Interphilologie: Sprachwissenschaft MA (Master's degree subject: French Language and Literature) Modul Research in English Linguistics (Master's degree subject: English) Modul Research Skills in English Linguistics or Literature (Master's degree subject: English (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul Soziolinguistik (Master's degree program: Language and Communication (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul Sprache als Prozess (Master's degree program: Language and Communication) Modul Sprache als System (Master's degree program: Language and Communication) Modul Sprache als System (Master's degree program: Language and Communication (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul Sprache und Gesellschaft (Master's degree program: Language and Communication) Modul Sprachen in Zeit und Raum (Master's degree program: Language and Communication (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) |
Assessment format | record of achievement |
Assessment details | The course will be held in seminar style, where contributions from students are indispensable, and the grades assign will reflect participation. Student will have a written exam on the material on Nov. 29. The instructor advises that students should try to participate in the group studies, because this is more instructive. |
Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
Repeat examination | one repetition, repetition counts |
Scale | Pass / Fail |
Repeated registration | no repetition |
Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
Offered by | Departement Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften |