LOT Summer School 2024 - LOT – Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (2024)

Historical Sociolinguistics

Teacher: Prof. dr. Rik Vosters

Contact

Affiliation: Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Email address: Rik.Vosters@vub.be

http://website teacher/: www.historicalsociolinguistics.be

Course level:Intermediate

Course prerequisites

Students need to be familiar with some of the basic tenets and concepts of sociolinguistics. Apart from this, no specific prior knowledge or skills are required to be able to take this course.

Course description

This course will provide students with an overview of the main topics, methods and theories within the field of historical sociolinguistics. After an introduction on what historical sociolinguistics is, why a historical sociolinguistic approach is useful, and how historical sociolinguists typically study language variation and change, we will deal with a range of themes (e.g. dialect contact, standardization, social networks, communities and individuals, genres, speech and writing, language history from below, attitudes and ideologies, multilingualism and language contact, and language planning. The course will use examples and cases from different languages and linguistic communities, with a special emphasis on recent and ongoing research into the history of Dutch.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Historical sociolinguistics: why, what and how?
Tuesday: Dialect contact and standardization
Wednesday: Social networks, communities and individuals; attitudes and ideologies
Thursday: Language history from below; genres, speech and writing
Friday: Multilingualism, language contact and language planning

Background and preparatory readings

All readings will come from the draft textbook on historical sociolinguistics, currently under contract with Cambridge University Press (Rutten, G. & Vosters, R.. In preparation. Historical sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Draft versions of individual chapters will be provided to the students in electronic format.

To be read before the start of the course:

Chapter 1 What is historical sociolinguistics
Chapter 2 Language variation and change

Course readings

One of the following chapters, to be read prior to class 2:

Chapter 3 Dialect contact
Chapter 4 Standardization

One of the following chapters, to be read prior to class 3:

Chapter 5 Networks, communities and individuals
Chapter 8 Attitudes and ideologies

One of the following chapters, to be read prior to class 4:

Chapter 6 Genre, speech and writing
Chapter 7 Language history from below

One of the following chapters, to be read prior to class 5:

Chapter 9 Multilingualism and language contact
Chapter 10 Language planning

A list of further readings and interesting case studiesper theme will be provided to students during the course.

Speech Acts in Discourse and Social Interaction: A Deontic Approach to Illocution

Teacher: Marina Sbisà

Contact

Affiliation: University of Trieste

Email address: sbisama@units.it

http://sites.units.it/sbisama/en/

http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marina-Sbisa

Course level: Advanced

Course prerequisites

The basic ability to recognize illocutionary force indicators, presupposition triggers and conversational implicature in discourse

Course description

The course will start with an overview of those aspects of philosophical pragmatics that prove helpful in the analysis of discourse and social interaction. Then, it will focus on the contributions of J.L. Austin. It will be clarified what Austin meant by ‘illocutionary act’ and illocutionary effects will be explicated as affecting the deontic aspects of interpersonal relations (roughly, what participants in a social interaction can or cannot do and should or should not do). So understood, illocution is concerned with matters of authority, rights, obligations, licenses, or legitimate expectations and Austin’s classification of illocutionary acts becomes a useful descriptive tool. It will be examined and discussed how illocution can work, what makes it a conventional fact and how we can tell what an illocutionary act was performed. This “dynamics” of illocution will be used to account for persuasive strategies such as those by which a participant manages to gain authority over others or make others accept a certain hierarchy of values. It will also be illustrated how the deontic approach to illocution can contribute to the understanding of largely debated interactional phenomena related to gender.

Students can propose short texts for analysis and discussion.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Philosophical Pragmatics and Discourse. Why be concerned with what philosophers said if what we are interested in is the analysis of discourse?
Tuesday: (Austin’s) Illocution and How to Use it. 1. Illocutionary Acts Classification(s)
Wednesday: (Austin’s) Illocution and How to Use it. 2. Dynamics of Illocution. Uptake, effects, defeasibility, accommodation.
Thursday: Dynamics of Illocution and Persuasive Strategies.
Friday: Dynamics of Illocution, Implicit Meaning and Gender Issues.

Background and preparatory readings

Austin, John L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed. by J. O. Urmson and M. Sbisà. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
M. Sbisà, ‘How to Read Austin’, Pragmatics 17 (3): 461-473 (open access), republished in M. Sbisà Essays on Speech Acts and Other Topics in Pragmatics, 181-194. Oxford University Press 2023.
L. Caponetto and P. Labinaz, ‘Sbisà’s Deontic Approach to Speech Actions’. In L. Caponetto and P. Labinaz (eds), Sbisà on Speech as Action, 1-26. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

Course readings

Class 1: M. Sbisà, ‘Philosophical pragmatics’. In Andreas H. Jucker, ‎Klaus P. Schneider and ‎Wolfram Bublitz (eds.), Methods in Pragmatics (Handbooks of Pragmatics 10), 133‒154. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2018.
Class 2: Sections 1-3 of M. Sbisà, ‘On illocutionary types’, Journal of Pragmatics 8(1): 93-112, 1984, republished in M. Sbisà, Essays on Speech Acts and Other Topics in Pragmatics, 23-42. Oxford University Press 2023.
Class 3: M. Sbisà, ‘Uptake and Conventionality in Illocution’, Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 5 (1): 33-52, 2009 (open access), republished in M. Sbisà, Essays on Speech Acts cit., 193-211.
Class 4: M. Sbisà, ‘Ideology and the Persuasive Use of Presupposition’. In J. Verschueren (ed.), Language and Ideology. Selected Papers from the 6th International Pragmatics Conference, 492-509. Antwerp: International Pragmatics Association, 1999. Republished inM. Sbisà, Essays on Speech Acts cit., 53-71.
Class 5: M. Sbisà, ‘Ways of Being Concerned with Gender in Philosophy’, Phenomenology and Mind 15: 132-145, 2018 (open access), republished in M. Sbisà, Essays on Speech Acts cit., 254-266.

Further readings

Other papers from Marina Sbisà, Essays on Speech acts and Other topics in pragmatics, Oxford University Press 2023, especially:
- ‘Introduction’, 1-22
- ‘Cognition and narrativity in speech act sequences’, 144-166 (original version in A. Fetzer and C. Meierkord, Rethinking Sequentiality, 71-98. Amsterdam: John Benjamins)
- ‘Illocution and Power Imbalance’, 288-305
Sbisà, ‘Presupposition and Implicature: Varieties of Implicit Meaning in Explicitation Practices’, Journal of Pragmatics 182: 176-188 (2021).
Chapter 1, ‘The Discovery of Illocution’ and Chapter 2, ‘Discussing Illocution’ from M. Sbisà, Austinian Themes. Illocution, Action, Knowledge, Truth, and Philosophy, Oxford University Press, forthcoming (author’s drafts, 2024).

THE READINGS THAT ARE NOT OPEN ACCESS, AVAILABLE THROUGH ONE’S UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, OR POSTED AS DRAFTS AT THE RESEARCHGATE WEB SITE WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE BY EMAIL ON REQUEST.

The Syntax of Questions

Teacher: Professor Michelle Sheehan

Contact

Affiliation: Newcastle University

Email address: michelle.sheehan1@newcastle.ac.uk

http://website teacher/: https://msheehan.net

Course level: Advanced

Course prerequisites

Students should be familiar with syntactic theory, in particular A-bar movement.

Course description

On this course, we will consider some of the core properties of questions in human languages and how to account for them in a minimalist approach. We will begin by considering spoken languages, looking particularly at restrictions on extraction from specific syntactic positions. We will then consider questions in signed languages and how they are both similar to and different from those in spoken languages.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Wh-movement, successive cyclicity and phases
Tuesday: Restrictions on subject extraction: that-trace effects (i)
Wednesday: Restrictions on subject extraction: syntactic ergativity (ii)
Thursday: Other related extraction restrictions
Friday: Questions in signed languages

Course readings

Class 1: van Urk, Coppe. (2020). Successive Cyclicity and the Syntax of Long-Distance Dependencies. Annual Review of Linguistics 2020 6(1):111-130. https://doi-org.libproxy.ncl.ac.uk/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011718-012318
Class 2: Douglas, Jamie. (2017) Unifying the that-trace and anti-that-trace effects. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1): 60. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.312
Class 3: Douglas, Jamie, Rodrigo Ranero & Michelle Sheehan. (2017). Two types of syntactic ergativity in Mayan. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics (Proceedings of GLOW in Asia XI, vol. 2) 85:41–56. https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/003540
Class 4: Holmberg, Anders, Michelle Sheehan, & Jenneke van der Wal. (2019). Movement from the Double Object Construction Is Not Fully Symmetrical.” Linguistic Inquiry 50(4):677-721. muse.jhu.edu/article/736315
Class 5: Cecchetto, Carlo, Carlo Geraci and Sandro Zucchi. 2009. Another Way to Mark Syntactic Dependencies: The Case for Right-Peripheral Specifiers in Sign Languages. Language 85(2):278-320. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40492869

Further readings

Coon, Jessica, Nico Baier & Theodore Levin. (2021) Mayan agent focus and the ergative extraction constraint: Facts and fictions revisited.Language97(2):269-332.https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2021.0019.
Pesetsky, David. (2017). Complementiser-trace effects. Blackwell-Wiley Companion to Syntax, second edition. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom108
Zeshan, Ulrike. (2004). Interrogative Constructions in Signed Languages: CrosslinguisticPerspectives.Language 80(1): 7–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4489610

Dynamics of code-switching across multilingual communities

Teacher: M. Carmen Parafita Couto

Contact

Affiliation: Leiden University Center for Linguistics

Email address: m.parafita.couto@hum.leidenuniv.nl

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/maria-del-carmen-parafita-couto/publications#tab-1

Course level: Intermediate state-of-the-art

Course prerequisites

Basic knowledge and skills in linguistic analysis and terminology will be assumed. Familiarity with the background reading texts for each class.

Course description

Multilingual speakers commonly draw on their languages within a single speech event, a practice known as code-switching. This course will provide an in-depth examination of this phenomenon. The question that will guide us is: how can we better understand the nature of mixed interactions, with a view to creating accurate models of (multilingual) language competence? We will discuss how a multimethod, comparative approach that integrates linguistic, psycholinguistic and social factors will help us draw a distinction between which code-switching patterns are uniform across communities and language combinations, and which patterns are variable.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Overview of code-switching research: theoretical and methodological considerations
Tuesday: Comparing code-switching across multilingual communities
Wednesday: From corpus to experimental techniques (I): nominal classification in code-switching
Thursday: From corpus to experimental techniques (II): N-Adj order as a conflict site
Friday: Looking ahead

Course background readings

Class 1:

Gullberg, M., Indefrey P. & Muysken. P. (2009). Research techniques for the study of code-switching. In Barbara Bullock and Jacqueline Toribio (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-Switching. Cambridge University Press, pp 21-39.
Parafita Couto, M.C., Bellamy, K., & Ameka, F. (2023). Theoretical approaches to multilingual switching. Cambridge Handbook of Third Language Acquisition and Processing. In Jennifer Cabrelli, Adel Chaouch-Orozco, Jorge González Alonso, Sergio M. Pereira Soares, Eloi Puig-Mayenco and Jason Rothman (eds). Cambridge University Press,pp. 403–436.

Class 2:

Parafita Couto, M.C. & Balam, O. (in press). Types of code-switching and code-switching communities. In Leonardo Cerno, Hans-Jörg Döhla, Miguel Gutiérrez Maté, Robert Hesselbach & Joachim Steffen, eds. Contact varieties of Spanish and Spanish-lexified contact varieties. HSK (Handbooks for Linguistics and Communication Science / Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft). Mouton De Gruyter.

Class 3:

Parafita Couto, M.C., Bellamy, K., Valdés Kroff, J., & Mateo, P. (forthcoming). Nominal classification in code-switching. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Classifiers (edited by Niels Schiller and Tanja Kupisch). Oxford University Press.

Class 4:

Vaughan-Evans, A., Parafita Couto, M.C., Boutonnet, B., Hoshino, N., Webb-Davies, P., Deuchar, M., & Thierry, G. (2020). An electrophysiological attempt to adjudicate between competing accounts of adjective-noun code-switching. Front. Psychol. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.549762

Class 5:

Parafita Couto, M.C., Greidanus Romaneli, M. & Bellamy, K. (2021). Code-switching at the interface between language, culture, and cognition. Lapurdum- Basque Studies Review. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03280922/document
Toribio, A.J. (2018). The future of code-switching research. In: Code-switching – Experimental Answers to Theoretical Questions: In honor of Kay González-Vilbazo, Edited by Luis López, pp. 257–267. [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 19]

Further readings

Suggestions for further readings will be distributed during the course.

Social media and digital media communication in societal contexts

Teacher: Sandy Barasa

Contact

Affiliation: Radboud University

Email address: sandy.barasa@ru.nl

http://website teacher/: https://www.ru.nl/en/people/barasa-s

Course level: Intermediate: state-of-the-art

Course prerequisites

Students should have enough background in language and communication theories and some related scientific research that will enable them to understand and at least reflect on the gist of the reviews and discussions in the course readings and lectures.

Course description

Have you communicated online today? What is your regular online communication media? In our current society, we communicate more and more via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and other countless digital and social media platforms. This course examines the impact these virtual media have on communication in different functional contexts within society.

Two central contexts in the use of digital and social media that the course is based on are:

personal contexts
professional and organizational contexts.

NOTE: We will not focus on the appliances/devices, or technology and their practical applications, but our focus will be on scientific research into the societal effects and implications of the popularity and the massive use of social media and how individuals and organisations communicate virtually online.

Course aim:

The main goals of the course are to scientifically and theoretically explore the:

techniques people use to present and profile themselves via social media
functions of social networks and their implications of friendship in an online environment
strategies that organisations present and profile themselves through social media marketing
influences of these social media communication in politics
effects of social media in the workplace

The lectures approach these important issues with regard to the use of digital and social media communication on the basis of scientific research, linked to societal developments. Students study theories and cases that scientists from various research fields have applied and studied, to understand how individuals and organizations use online media for personal or professional communication. We will also reflect critically on the various research methods that have been employed within the scientific research into social media and online communication. Students will also interrelate their personal experiences and practices theoretically based on the knowledge gathered in the lectures and the concomitant literature.

Day-to-day programme

Teacher: Dr. Hans Rutger Bosker

Contact

Affiliation: Donders Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen

Email address: HansRutger.Bosker@donders.ru.nl

http://website teacher/: https://hrbosker.github.io

Course level: Intermediate: state-of-the-art

Course prerequisites

Familiarity with concepts in speech acoustics (e.g., f0, formants, VOT) will be helpful.

Course description

Prosody in spoken communication generally refers to those aspects of speech that fall outside the segmental information about consonants and vowels (e.g., intonation, stress, rhythm). Still, this course will describe how suprasegmental prosody and segmental cues in speech are tightly interconnected. As such, it aims to reveal the central role that prosody plays in low-level speech perception and spoken word recognition. Each lecture targets a different processing mechanism by which prosody impacts speech perception, including general-auditory normalization, neural speech tracking, prosody-guided prediction, talker-specific learning, as well as audiovisual integration of multisensory cues to prosody. Thus, prosody – in all its different forms and appearances – is a potent factor in speech perception, determining which words and speech sounds we hear.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Low-level normalization for prosody
Tuesday: Neural tracking of prosody
Wednesday: Prosody-guided prediction
Thursday: Talker-specific learning of prosody
Friday: Audiovisual integration of multisensory prosody

Background and preparatory readings:

Arvaniti, A.(2020). The Phonetics of Prosody. In S. Calhoun (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.411.
Nooteboom, S., Brokx, J. P. L., & De Rooij, J. J. (1978). Contributions of Prosody to Speech Perception. In W. J. M. Levelt and G. B. Flores d’Arcais (Eds.), Studies in the Perception of Language. p.75-107. New York: Wiley. Open fulltext.

Course readings:

Class 1

Bosker, H. R., Sjerps, M. J., & Reinisch, E. (2020). Temporal contrast effects in human speech perception are immune to selective attention. Scientific Reports, 10: 5607. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-62613-8.

Class 2

Peelle, J. E., & Davis, M. H. (2012). Neural oscillations carry speech rhythm through to comprehension. Frontiers in Psychology, 3. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00320.

Class 3

Arnold, J. E., Hudson Kam, C. L., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2007). If you say -thee uh- you’re describing something hard: The on-line attribution of disfluency during reference comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33, 914–930. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.33.5.914.

Class 4

Severijnen, G. G. A., Di Donna, G., Bosker, H. R., & McQueen, J. M. (2023). Tracking talker-specific cues to lexical stress: Evidence from perceptual learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 49(4), 549–565. doi:10.1037/xhp0001105. Open fulltext.

Class 5

Bosker, H. R., & Peeters, D. (2021). Beat gestures influence which speech sounds you hear. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 288(1943), 1–9. doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.2419.

Analyzing Typologies in Optimality Theory

Teacher: Birgit Alber

Affiliation: Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

Email address: birgit.alber@unibz.it

http://website teacher/: https://www.unibz.it/de/faculties/education/academic-staff/person/41363-birgit-alber

Course level: Advanced

Course prerequisites

Acquaintance with phonological analysis and Optimality Theory

Course description

Optimality Theory makes precise predictions as to the typologies of linguistic structures that are expected to exist: once GEN and CON are defined, the factorial typology includes all possible languages generated through the evaluation of the set of candidates by the set of constraints. But once we have generated such a typology, how can we understand its inner intensional structure, as arising from constraint interaction? How can we compare one typology to another? In this course we explore the analysis of typologies with the help of Property Theory (Alber & Prince 2021). We aim to find those ranking conditions which have the power to define the typology (i.e., the properties of the typology). Our software tool of choice in this endeavor is OTWorkplace (Prince, Merchant and Tesar 2017-2024; students will be provided with an account on a server where it can be used remotely). The target of analysis includes typologies of syllable structure, stress systems and phenomena in the domain of prosodic morphology (e.g. truncation and blends). Participants are encouraged to create their own formal typology and to analyze it.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Typologies: from data collection to formal analysis
Tuesday: Introduction to Property Analysis
Wednesday: A typological analysis of stress
Thursday: A typological analysis of truncation
Friday: A typological analysis of blends

Background and preparatory readings

Please read from this literature as much as you can. We will discuss details during the course.

Alber, B. & S. Arndt-Lappe. 2022. Anchoring in Truncation: a typological analysis. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 41, 1-50.
Alber, B. & A. Prince. 2017. The Book of nGX. Memoirs of the Society of Typological Analysis 1.1. https://roa.rutgers.edu/article/view/1663
Alber, B. & A. Prince. 2021. The Structure of OT Typologies. Chapter 1: Introduction to Property Theory. https://roa.rutgers.edu/article/view/1838
Arndt-Lappe, S. & I. Plag. 2013. The role of prosodic structure in the formation of English blends. English Language and Linguistics 17(3). 537—563.
Bellik, J., J. Ito, N. Kalivoda & A. Mester. 2023. Chapter 1 Introduction. In: Bellik, J., J. Ito, N. Kalivoda & A. Mester (eds).Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory: Theory and Analysis. Equinox Publishing. Advances in Optimality Theory (especially section 3.)
Prince, A. 2016. What is OT?. https://roa.rutgers.edu/article/view/1513
Prince, A., N. Merchant & B. Tesar. 2007-2024. OT-Workplace. https://sites.google.com/site/otworkplace/

Course readings

Class 1:

Alber, B. & S. Arndt-Lappe. 2022. Anchoring in Truncation: a typological analysis. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 41, 1-50. (especially p. 1-26)
Alber, B. & A. Prince. 2021. The Structure of OT Typologies. Chapter 1: Introduction to Property Theory. https://roa.rutgers.edu/article/view/1838 (especially p. 1-15)

Class 2:

Alber, B. & A. Prince. 2021. The Structure of OT Typologies. Chapter 1: Introduction to Property Theory. https://roa.rutgers.edu/article/view/1838 (especially p. 16-44)
Bellik, J., J. Ito, N. Kalivoda & A. Mester. 2023. Chapter 1 Introduction. In: Bellik, J., J. Ito, N. Kalivoda & A. Mester (eds). Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory. Theory and Analyses. Equinox Publishing, Sheffield/Bristol. 1-29. (Especially section ch. 1.3, Optimality Theory, p. 10-20)

Class 3:

Alber, B. & A. Prince. 2017. The Book of nGX. Memoirs of the Society of Typological Analysis 1.1. https://roa.rutgers.edu/article/view/1663
Alber, B. & A. Prince. 2021. The Structure of OT Typologies. Chapter 1: Introduction to Property Theory. https://roa.rutgers.edu/article/view/1838 (reread 1-44)

Class 4:

Alber, B. & S. Arndt-Lappe. 2022. Anchoring in Truncation: a typological analysis. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 41, 1-50. (especially p. 27-46)

Class 5:

Arndt-Lappe, S. & I. Plag. 2013. The role of prosodic structure in the formation of English blends. English Language and Linguistics 17(3). 537—563.

Further readings:

Alber, Birgit, N. DelBusso & A. Prince. 2016. From intensional properties to universal support. Language 92(2): 88–116.
Alber, B. & S. Arndt-Lappe. 2023. Clipping and Truncation. In: Ackema, Peter, Sabrina Benjaballah, Eulàlia Bonet & Antonio Fábregas (eds.). The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology. Wiley Blackwell, Chichester.
Alber, B. & J. Kokkelmans. 2022. Typology and language change: The case of truncation. RLLT17, eds. Ora Matushansky, Laurent Roussarie, Michela Russo, Elena Soare & Sophie Wauquier. Special issue of Isogloss Open Journal of Romance Linguistics. 8(2)/13, 1-17.
Alber, B. & A. Prince. 2022. The Structure of OT Typologies. Chapter 2.1: A pseudo-parametric typology at the syntax-prosody interface. https://roa.rutgers.edu/article/view/1904
Apostolopoulou, E. 2022. Typological variation in language contact. A phonological analysis of Italiot Greek. PhD diss. University of Verona/University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway. https://munin.uit.no/handle/10037/25480 (especially chapter 4 and 5)
Bennett, W. G. & N. DelBusso. 2018. Typological effects of ABC constraint
definitions. Phonology 35.1:1-37. https://roa.rutgers.edu/article/view/1700
Kalivoda, N. 2023. Interactions of matching, alignment, and binarity in Japanese and beyond. In: Bellik, J., J. Ito, N. Kalivoda & A. Mester. Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory. Theory and Analyses. Equinox Publishing, Sheffield/Bristol. 241-311.
Kokkelmans, J. 2021. The Phonetics and Phonology of Sibilants. A Synchronic and
Diachronic OT Typology of Sibilant Inventories. PhD dissertation, University of Verona. https://roa.rutgers.edu/article/view/1864 (especially chapter 5)
Merchant, N. & Alan Prince. 2023. The Mother of All Tableaux: Order, equivalence, and geometry in the large-scale structure of OT. To appear in the series Advances in Optimality Theory. Equinox Publishing, Sheffield/Bristol.

The semantics of (In)Definite DPs, with special focus on West African

Teacher: Malte Zimmermann

Contact

Affiliation: Universität Potsdam

Email address: mazimmer@uni-potsdam.de

https://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~zimmermann/

Course level:Advanced

Course prerequisites

Solid background knowledge of formal semantics and the basic compositional semantic mechanisms of Function Application and Predicate Modification, as well as generalized quantifiers; e.g., Heim & Kratzer (1998: chs. 1 – 6) or Coppock & Champollion (2021: chs. 6 & 7); https://eecoppock.info/bootcamp/semantics-boot-camp.pdf

Course description

In this course, we look into the interpretation of definite and indefinite DPs, with an empirical focus on data from West African languages (mainly Chadic and Kwa). As for definite DPs, we will discuss both plain uniqueness and indexed definite DPs as proposed in Schwarz (2009) and Jenks (2018), i.a., as well as the special meaning of demonstratives. On the indefinite side, we will discuss the modelling of indefinite DPs as involving (i.) generalized quantifiers (Montague 1973, Heim & Kratzer 1998), (ii.) the application of a choice function, or (iii.) pseudo-noun incorporation/variable restriction, respectively. Throughout, the formal modelling choices will be illustrated and motivated with the help of data from Hausa, Akan, and Ga. Unlike Germanic and Romance languages with a binary DEF vs INDEF-split, these languages exhibit a tri- (or even fourway-) partition into overt definite DPs, overt indefinite DPs, and bare NPs. The latter can receive definite or indefinite readings depending on syntactic position and context. Tripartite systems thereby give rise to different pragmatic blocking effects under competition, which have an effect on the interpretation of bare NPs to be discussed in class.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Unique (weak) vs Indexed (strong) Definites
Tuesday: Indexed Definites vs Demonstratives
Wednesday: Generalized Quantifiers, Exceptional Scope, and Choice Functions
Thursday: The Interpretation of Bare Indefinite NPs & Pragmatic Competition
Friday: Two case studies: Hausa vs Akan

Background Readings

Chierchia, G. (1998). Plurality of Mass Nouns and the notion of ‘semantic parameter’. In S. Rothstein (ed.), Events and Grammar, Dordrecht: 53-103.
Chung, S. & W. A. Ladusaw (2003). Restriction and Saturation. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Reinhart, T. (1997). Quantifier Scope: How Labor Is Divided between QR and Choice Functions. Linguistics and Philosophy 20(4): 335-397

Preparatory Readings

Driemel, I. (2019). Pseudo-Noun Incorporation across languages. PhD thesis. Universität Leipzig. (chs. 2, 4, 5)
Kratzer, A. (1998). Scope or Pseudocscope. Are there wide-scope indefinites? In: S. Rothstein (eds) Events and Grammar. Springer, Dordrecht.
Schwarz, F. (2009). Two Types of Definites in Natural Language. PhD thesis. UMASS, Amherst. (chs. 2, 5, 6)

Course readings

Class 1: Schwarz, F. (2013). Two kinds of definites cross‐linguistically. Language and Linguistics Compass, 7(10), 534-559. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12048
Class 2: Jenks, P. (2018). (2018). Articulated definiteness without articles. Linguistic Inquiry 49(3): 501–536. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00280
Class 3: Renans, A. (2018). Two types of choice-functional indefinites: evidence from Ga (Kwa). Topoi 37, 405-415 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11245-017-9479-3
Class 4: Philipp, M. (2022). Quantifier Scope Ambiguities in English, German, and Asante Twi (Akan): Structural and Pragmatic Factors. PhD thesis, Universität Potsdam ; chs. 5.3 & 5.4 (pp. 134 – 169) https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-61235
Class 5: Grubic, M. & M. Zimmermann (2011). The Expression of Indefiniteness in Hausa. Handout, UMASS – Semantics Seminar, March 31, 2011.

Further readings

Bombi, Carla, Mira Grubic, Agata Renans & Reginald A. Duah. 2019. The semantics of the (so-called) clausal determiner nó in Akan (Kwa). In M. T. Espinal, E. Castroviejo, M. Leonetti, L. McNally & C. Real-Puigdollers (eds.), Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB) 23, vol. 1, 181–199
Bombi, Carla. 2018. Definiteness in Akan: Familiarity and uniqueness revisited. In S. Maspong, B. Stefánsdóttir, K. Blake and F. Davis (eds.), Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 28, 120–140.
Dayal, Veneeta and Li Julie Jiang (2022). The Puzzle of Anaphoric Bare Nouns in Mandarin: A Counterpoint to Index! Linguistic Inquiry 54.1, pp. 147–167.
Owusu, Augustina P. (2022). Cross-categorial definiteness/familiarity. PhD thesis. Rutgers.
Šimík, Radek. 2021. Inherent vs. accidental uniqueness in bare and demon-strative nominals. In Andreas Blümel et al. (eds.), Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2018, 365–391. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5483118

Developmental sociolinguistics

Teacher: Gunther De Vogelaer

Contact

Affiliation: University of Münster

Email address: devogelaer@uni-muenster.de

http://website teacher/:

Level:Advanced

Course prerequisites

Students should have insight in the important theoretical and methodological developments in the field of sociolinguistics since its emergence in the 1960s. They should also be able to evaluate empirical evidence, especially as gathered through quantitative methods.

Course description

Despite the fact that linguistics developed an intense interest for language acquisition as a result of a cognitive turn decades ago, sociolinguists have only turned to investigate children in more recent times. In this course, the aim is to take stock of the developments in the field of ‘developmental sociolinguistics’ that have shaped the field since around 2000. We will discuss both theoretical and methodological advances, and include findings from both observational and experimental studies. This state-of-the-art will then serve as the input to reflect on the general state of sociolinguistics.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: acquisition as a window on cognition: a sociolinguistic perspective
Tuesday: children’s production: mapping input on output
Wednesday: developing a developmental agenda
Thursday: a holistic perspective: zooming in on Dutch
Friday: integrating findings: an outlook for sociolinguistics

Preparatory readings:

De Vogelaer, Gunther, Jean-Pierre Chevrot, Matthias Katerbow & Aurélie Nardy (2017). Bridging the gap between language acquisition and sociolinguistics: Introduction to an interdisciplinary topic. In: De Vogelaer, Gunther & Matthias Katerbow (eds.). Acquiring sociolinguistic variation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. p.1-42.

Recommended background reading:

Silverstein, Michael (2003). Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life. Language & Communication 23, 193–229.
Eckert, Penelope. 2012. “Three Waves of Variation Study: The Emergence of Meaning in the Study of Sociolinguistic Variation.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41, 87–100.

Course readings

Class 1: Cornips, Leonie & Aafke Hulk (2006). External and Internal Factors in Bilingual and Bidialectal Language Development: Grammatical Gender of the Dutch Definite Determiner. In: Claire Lefebvre, Lydia White & Christine Jourdan (eds.). L2 Acquisition and Creole Genesis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. p.355-378. downloadable via:https://pure.knaw.nl/portal/files/458390/2006Corn&Hulk-genderbilacq-Lefebvre.pdf

Class 2: Smith, Jennifer, Mercedes Durham and Lianne Fortune (2007). “Mam, ma troosers is fa’in doon!” Community, caregiver and child in the acquisition of variation in Scottish dialect. Language Variation and Change 19, 63-99. doi: 10.1017/S0954394507070044

Class 3: choose one of:

Jones, Zack, Qingyang Yan, Laura Wagner and Cynthia G. Clopper (2017). The development of dialect classification across the lifespan. Journal of Phonetics 60, 20-37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2016.11.001

Barbu, Stéphanie, Aurélie Nardy, Jean-Pierre Chevrot and Jacques Juhel (2013). Language Evaluation and Use during Early Childhood: Adhesion to Social Norms or Integration of Environmental Regularities? Linguistics 51, 381-411. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2013-0015

Class 4: choose one of:

Zenner, Eline, Laura Rosseel & Dirk Speelman (2021). Starman or Sterrenman: An acquisitional perspective on the social meaning of English in Flanders. International Journal of Bilingualism, 25(3), 568-591. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006920960816

De Houwer, Annick (2003). Language variation and local elements in family discourse. Language Variation and Change 15, 327-349. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394503153033

Class 5: Geeraerts, Dirk & Gitte Kristiansen (2012). Cognitive Linguistics and Language Variation. In: Jeannette Littlemore & John Taylor (eds.). The Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics. Draft version downloadable via: https://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/qlvl/prints/iclc_cogsoc.pdf

Research Methods in Language Micro-Variation

Teachers: Jelena Prokic & Matthew Sung

Contact

Affiliation: Leiden University

Email address: j.prokic@hum.leidenuniv.nl

http://website teacher/: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/jelena-prokic#tab-1

Course level:Intermediate

Course prerequisites

It is expected that students have had at least an introductory course in language variation and/or dialectology and some experience with data-driven research. Familiarity with more specific quantitative methods used in research on language variation is desirable, but not necessary to follow the course.

Course description

The course focuses on research methods used in language micro-variation. We will start with a brief overview of the various traditional methods, including dialect surveys and linguistic atlases. After that, we will engage with computational methods and cover topics from data digitization to data analysis and visualization. How can we calculate similarities between language varieties? How many dialect groups can we identify? Is there a geographic pattern in the observed distributions? What are the most characteristic features in each identified area? To answer these questions, we will discuss state-of-the art methods and with the help of open-source tools work on several datasets. This course aims at providing a theoretical and practical knowledge in working with digital data on language micro-variation.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Introduction to research methods in language micro-variation

In this session, we will first look at various kinds of dialect maps, followed by a discussion of the pros and cons of traditional dialectological methods. We will also discuss the 21^st century approaches such as using mobile apps to collect contemporary dialect data.

Tuesday: Automatically comparing and grouping language varieties

Students will learn how to calculate linguistic distances using computational methods, and they will learn how to analyse and visualise the results of the analysis.

Wednesday: Contemporary approaches in dialectology

This session will cover the latest approaches in the study of linguistic micro-variation, including feature extraction and tonal dialectology.

Thursday: Introduction to LED-A.org

This will be a hands-on session where students will get acquainted with a free online tool specialised in the quantitative methods covered in the previous sessions.

Friday: Small project on digital mapping & language variation

Students will work together with the tutors on a small project where they will have a chance to apply the learned methods and go from the raw data to the visualisation and the interpretation of the results.

Course readings

Class 1:

Francis, W. N. (1983). Dialectology: An Introduction. London ; New York : Longman. Chapter 6.
Rabanus, S. (2018). Dialect Maps. In Charles Boberg,John Nerbonne,Dominic Watt (eds.). The Handbook of Dialectology. Chapter 20. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118827628.ch20

Class 2:

Goebl, H. (2018). In Charles Boberg, John Nerbonne, Dominic Watt (eds.). The Handbook of Dialectology. Chapter 7. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118827628.ch7
Heeringa, W. and Prokic, J. (2018). Computational Dialectology. In Charles Boberg,John Nerbonne,Dominic Watt (eds.). The Handbook of Dialectology. Chapter 19. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118827628.ch19

Class 3:

Nerbonne, J. and Wieling, M. (2018). Statistics for Aggregate Variationist Analyses. In Charles Boberg, John Nerbonne, Dominic Watt (eds.). The Handbook of Dialectology. Chapter 24. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118827628.ch24
Sung, M. & Prokic, J. (accepted). Detecting Dialect Features Using Normalised Pointwise Information. Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands Journal.

Class 4:

Heeringa, W., Van Heuven, V. & Van de Velde, H. (2023). LED-A: Levenshtein Edit Distance App [computer program]. https://www.led-a.org/

Class 5:

Practical session, no reading.

Further readings

Leemann, A., Kolly, M. J., & Britain, D. (2018). The English Dialects App: The creation of a crowdsourced dialect corpus. Ampersand, 5, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amper.2017.11.001
Sung, M., Prokic, J. & Chen, Y. (2024). A New Dataset for Tonal and Segmental Dialectometry from the Yue- and Pinghua-Speaking Area. In Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Research in Computational Linguistic Typology and Multilingual NLP Workshop.

Neurolinguistics: language, emotions and beyond

Teacher: Prof. Dr. Christian Dobel

Contact

Affiliation: Department of Experimental ENT Science, Jena University Hospital, Jena Germany

Email address: Christian.dobel@med.uni-jena.de

http://website teacher/: https://www.uniklinikum-jena.de/hno/Informationen+zur+Klinik/Mitarbeiter/Dokumente/Univ_+Prof_+Dr_+Christian+Dobel-p-7818.html

Course level:Intermediate

Course prerequisites

The participants should know basic aspects of experimental, cognitive research. Knowledge about one neuroscientific method is helpful.

Course description

I was trained as a neuro- and psycholinguist and I am currently working in an ENT (Ear Nose Throat) department and leading a daycare clinic specialized in the treatment of chronic tinnitus. All my current work centres around comprehension and expression of verbal and nonverbal emotional signals. I will be asking how emotional words (and other stimuli) are processed in the brain. Similarly as for other emotional signals, it turns out that the brain processes emotional aspects of words within 100 ms. Together with the presentation of this research, I will introduce neuroscientific methods to answer such questions also covering how we can actively and noninvasively stimulate the brain and its basic activity.

While language is one way to communicate neutral and emotional utterances, our face also carries information about attentional and emotional states. I will explore how emotional facial expression serves to express emotions and I will explain how closely it is related to linguistic processing.

Finally, we will explore the role of speech comprehension in hearing loss, the regaining of vocal speech comprehension after cochlear implantation and how speech perception is impaired in patients suffering from chronic tinnitus.

Taken together, I want to show how important linguistics is in scientific and medical fields that you might be unaware of.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Introduction and overview of neuroscientific methods
Tuesday: Faster than thought: on the processing of emotional words
Wednesday: Language and the communicating face
Thursday: Speech Comprehension using Cochlear Implants after Hearing Loss
Friday: Speech Comprehension in Tinnitus

Course readings

Class 1: Junghöfer M, Bradley MM, Elbert TR, Lang PJ. Fleeting images: a new look at early emotion discrimination. Psychophysiology. 2001 Mar;38(2):175-8. PMID: 11347862.
Laeger I, Dobel C, Radenz B, Kugel H, Keuper K, Eden A, Arolt V, Zwitserlood P, Dannlowski U, Zwanzger P. Of ‘disgrace’ and ‘pain’–corticolimbic interaction patterns for disorder-relevant and emotional words in social phobia. PLoS One. 2014 Nov 14;9(11):e109949. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0109949. PMID: 25396729; PMCID: PMC4232246.
Class 2: Roesmann K, Dellert T, Junghoefer M, Kissler J, Zwitserlood P, Zwanzger P, Dobel C. The causal role of prefrontal hemispheric asymmetry in valence processing of words – Insights from a combined cTBS-MEG study. Neuroimage. 2019 May 1;191:367-379. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.01.057. Epub 2019 Feb 1. PMID: 30716460.
Class 3: Hoemann K, Gendron M, Barrett LF. Assessing the Power of Words to Facilitate Emotion Category Learning. Affect Sci. 2022 Jan 6;3(1):69-80. doi: 10.1007/s42761-021-00084-4. Erratum in: Affect Sci. 2022 Mar 19;3(1):191. PMID: 36046100; PMCID: PMC9382977.
Class 4: Ortmann M, Zwitserlood P, Knief A, Baare J, Brinkheetker S, Am Zehnhoff-Dinnesen A, Dobel C. When Hearing Is Tricky: Speech Processing Strategies in Prelingually Deafened Children and Adolescents with Cochlear Implants Having Good and Poor Speech Performance. PLoS One. 2017 Jan 5;12(1):e0168655. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0168655. PMID: 28056017; PMCID: PMC5215792.
Class 5: Ivansic D, Guntinas-Lichius O, Müller B, Volk GF, Schneider G, Dobel C. Impairments of Speech Comprehension in Patients with Tinnitus-A Review. Front Aging Neurosci. 2017 Jul 11;9:224. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2017.00224. PMID: 28744214; PMCID: PMC5504093.

Further readings:

If you want, in any book on cognitive neuroscience the chapter about neuroscientific methods, e.g.
Banich, Marie T., and Rebecca J. Compton.Cognitive neuroscience. Cambridge University Press, 2018. Chapter 3.

Linguistics and diversity

Teacher: Stéphane Térosier

Affiliation: Leiden University

Email address: s.d.terosier@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Website: http://sterosier.github.io

Course prerequisites

Students are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the various papers gathered in the two recent volumes edited by Charity Hudley et al. (2024a,b), as these offer a timely survey of issues related to the unspoken colonial heritage of modern linguistics, as well as its relative lack of diversity.

Charity Hudley, A. H., Mallinson, C., & Bucholtz, M. (Eds.). (2024). Decolonizing linguistics. Oxford University Press. Available in Open Access.

Charity Hudley, A. H., Mallinson, C., & Bucholtz, M. (Eds.). (2024b). Inclusion in linguistics. Oxford University Press. Available in Open Access.

Course description:

The consensus among linguists is that linguistic diversity should be valued and preserved. This is notably reflected in the universally held views that all the languages of the world are equally worthy of our interest and that they should all be preserved. These views are evidenced in linguists’ efforts to document as many of these languages as possible, as well as their participation in the revitalization of endangered languages.

Closer scrutiny, however, reveals that the relation between linguistics and diversity may not be quite as unproblematic as it would appear. The aim of this course is thus to investigate some of the points of tension in this relation. Among these is the unquestioned colonial and ethnocentric heritage of linguistics (see the continued use of terminology that was initially coined to prove the superiority of the colonizers’ languages, or, to a lesser extent, the often unwritten assumption that monolingualism the default situation). The field’s lack of diversity is also an issue which deserves examination, as it affects its ability to engage the wider world and the effectiveness of its outreach efforts.

The course also explores the means through which these points of tension may be resolved. These include the reconsideration of terminological, methodological and theoretical biases. Efforts made to diversify the field will also be addressed and evaluated against the backdrop of the need for linguistics to improve its broader impact.

Day-to-day programme:

Monday: The persistence of colonial assumptions in linguistics: The case of Creole studies
Tuesday: Issues of diversity in linguistics
Wednesday: Epistemological implications of a decolonial and inclusive linguistics
Thursday: Methodological implications of a decolonial and inclusive linguistics
Friday: Wrapping up – How can we collectively achieve the goal of a decolonial and inclusive linguistics?

Background and preparatory readings

Beside the aforementioned volumes edited by Charity Hudley et al. (2022a,b), students are encouraged to read articles published in the Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics (https://iacpl.net/jopol/issues/).

Course readings

Class 1

DeGraff, M. (2003). Against Creole exceptionalism. Language, 79(2), 391-410. https://doi.org/DOI 10.1353/lan.2003.0114

Class 2

Charity Hudley, A. H., Mallinson, C., & Bucholtz, M. (2020). Toward racial justice in linguistics: Interdisciplinary insights into theorizing race in the discipline and diversifying the profession. Language, 96(4), e200-e235. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2020.0074 [Students should focus on sections 3-6.]

Class 3

Braithwaite, B., & Ali, K. (2024). The colonial geography of lingusitics: A view from the Caribbean. In A. H. Charity Hudley, C. Mallinson, & M. Bucholtz (Eds.), Decolonizing linguistics (pp. 63-79). Oxford University Press.

Class 4

Bowern, C., & Dockum, R. (2024). Decolonizing historical linguistics in the classroom and beyond. In A. H. Charity Hudley, C. Mallinson, & M. Bucholtz (Eds.), Decolonizing linguistics (pp. 195-216). Oxford University Press.

Class 5

Linguistic Society of America. (2019). Statement on race. Accessible at https://www.lsadc.org/statement_on_race.
Kastner, I., Kotek, H., Anonymous, A., Dockum, R., Dow, M., Esipova, M., Green, C. M., Stickles, E., & Snider, T. (2022). The Open Letter: Responses and recommendations. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v7i1.5257

For the final session, students are invited to think of actions that may contribute to a truly decolonial and inclusive linguistics. The above documents are meant to serve as sources of inspiration.

Further readings:

A list of additional readings will be published on my website mid- to late May.

The Developing Speaker

Teacher: Prof. dr. Claartje Levelt

Contact

Affiliation: Leiden University Centre for Linguistics

Email address: c.c.levelt@hum.leidenuniv.nl

http://website teacher/: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/claartje-levelt#tab-1

Course info

Level: Intermediate state-of-the-art

Course prerequisites

Basic knowledge of phonology and IPA

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Topic outline and background: phonological development and typical phonological errors in developing speech; data and approaches.
Tuesday: Models of speech production (Levelt et al. 1999; the GoDiva model of Meier and Guenther, 2023) and thinking about phonological development from the perspective of such models.
Wednesday: Sources of phonological errors in developing speech (1): speech perception
Thursday: Sources of phonological errors in developing speech (2): word-form encoding and articulation
Friday: Self-monitoring and self-correction

Background and preparatory readings

Levelt, W. J., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production.Behavioral and brain sciences,22(1), 1-38.
Chládková, K., & Paillereau, N. (2020). The what and when of universal perception: A review of early speech sound acquisition. Language Learning,70(4), 1136-1182.

Course readings

Class 1

Demuth, K. (2011). The Acquisition of Phonology. InThe Handbook of Phonological Theory: Second Edition (pp. 571-595). Wiley-Blackwell, Wiley.

Class 2

Meier, A. M., & Guenther, F. H. (2023). Neurocomputational modeling of speech motor development. Journal of Child Language, 1-18.
Levelt, W. J. (1998). The genetic perspective in psycholinguistics or where do spoken words come from?. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research,27, 167-180.

Class 3

McMurray, B. (2023). The acquisition of speech categories: Beyond perceptual narrowing, beyond unsupervised learning and beyond infancy.Language, cognition and neuroscience,38(4), 419-445.

Class 4

Ramus, F., Peperkamp, S., Christophe, A., Jacquemot, C., Kouider, S., & Dupoux, E. (2010). A psycholinguistic perspective on the acquisition of phonology.Laboratory phonology,10(3), 311-340.

Class 5

Levelt, C., van den Brink, E., & Karlsson, J. (2023). Prompted Self-Repairs in Two-Year-Old Children.In: van de Weijer, J. (Ed.). Segmental Structure and Representations(Vol. 32). Walter de Gruyter, 227 – 248.

Queer linguistics

Teacher: Hielke Vriesendorp

Contact

Affiliation: Utrecht University

Email address: h.a.d.vriesendorp@uu.nl

http://website teacher/: https://www.uu.nl/staff/HADVriesendorp

Course level:Intermediate

Course prerequisites

Participants are expected to be familiar with sociolinguistic research, especially regarding the ‘Three Waves’ of sociolinguistics. For those less familiar, it may be good to brush up on Eckert’s (2012) overview paper.

Course description

This course dives into the state of the art of queer linguistics from a variationist angle: how do queer language users use language variation to position themselves in the social landscape. We explore the state of the art, focusing on four themes: queer non-queer contrastive approaches, intersectionality, trans linguistics and social justice.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Introduction and field overview
Tuesday: Early work: gay vs. straight
Wednesday: Intersectionality and race
Thursday: Trans linguistics and embodiment
Friday: Queer linguistics and social justice

Background and preparatory readings

Eckert, P. (2012). Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation.Annual review of Anthropology,41, 87-100. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145828

Course readings

Class 1: Jones, L. (2021). Queer linguistics and identity: The past decade.Journal of Language and Sexuality,10(1), 13-24. https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.00010.jon
Class 2: Gaudio, R. P. (1994). Sounding gay: Pitch properties in the speech of gay and straight men.American speech,69(1), 30-57. https://doi.org/10.2307/455948
Class 3: Calder, J., & King, S. (2020). Intersections between race, place, and gender in the production of/s.University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics,26(2), 5. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/359025932.pdf
Class 4: Zimman, L. (2018). Transgender voices: Insights on identity, embodiment, and the gender of the voice.Language and Linguistics Compass,12(8), e12284. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12284
Class 5: Conrod, K. (2022). Variation in English gendered pronouns: Analysis and recommendations for ethics in linguistics. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 11(2), 141-164. https://doi-org.proxy.library.uu.nl/10.1075/jls.20026.con

Exploratory data analysis: From start to report

Teacher: Thomas Van Hoey

Contact
Affiliation: KU Leuven

Email address: thomas_van_hoey@outlook.com

http://website teacher/: thomasvanhoey.com

Course level:Intermediate

Course prerequisites

Participants of this course are assumed to have read studies that make use of quantitative approaches within the domains of their own interests. That is, notions like sample, population, p value etc. should ring a bell. In addition, participants can read Winter (2022) for an overview of confirmatory data analysis vs. exploratory data analysis within linguistics.

On the practical side, participants should install the latest version of R and Rstudio and the necessary packages. A pdf with instructions for Windows and Mac will be sent in advance so that the whole group works with the same software versions.

Winter, Bodo. 2022. Mapping the landscape of exploratory and confirmatory data analysis in linguistics. In Dennis Tay & Molly Xie Pan (eds.), Data Analytics in Cognitive Linguistics, 13–48. De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110687279-002.

Course description

It is quite common for textbooks and studies to present linguistic data analyses in a clean and clear fashion. This often gives the impression that the analysis aspect of a study is easily reproducible. In reality, it can be quite hard to recreate a study or reanalyze the data in light of new frameworks, because data is often unavailable, unreproducible, or untidy.

In this course, we focus on these three aspects.

(1) Participants will learn best practices to ensure that their work is made available. This includes setting up projects, keeping track of changes and advances in the project, and reporting it to your local group (supervisor / collaborator) and the wider world.

(2) Participants are shown effective ways to help their data analyses stand the test of time, to their future selves and other interested parties, by implementing the concept of literate programming through reporting formats like R markdown (Rmd) and quarto (qmd).

(3) Participants are given a number of messy datasets that mirror data as we find it in experiments or corpora. Techniques for wrangling the unclean data into tidy datasets demonstrates how exploratory (and confirmatory) analyses are facilitated. This in turn opens up new perspectives for reanalyzing previous data, or to start exploring what is hidden within a given dataset.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own data. They will learn *practical* basic data analysis techniques to act as a Swiss knife, as well as where to go to find help.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Setting up a project, doing a first analysis with tidy data, reporting, sharing.
Tuesday: Wrangling messy data into tidy data, basic operations
Wednesday: Handling textual data, regular expressions
Thursday: Dimensionality reduction techniques
Friday: Clusters, trees, forests

Course literature

Except for Winter (2022; see above), there aren’t any background readings or preparatory readings, but a pdf with instructions will be sent out to participants before the summer school.

Every class will present a number of data sets that will refer to relevant studies, but these are strictly further reading material. What is important in this course are the practical skills gained from dealing with actual data. It is beneficial for participants to revise what they learned during class so they can ask questions if necessary. Other further reading material will be presented throughout the lecture series.

Comparing cross-modally: Grammaticalisation in creoles and sign languages

Teachers: Luigi Lerose¹, Susanne Maria Michaelis², Nick Palfreyman¹

Contact

Affiliation: ¹University of Central Lancashire, ²Leipzig University

Email addresses: nbpalfreyman2@uclan.ac.uk, susanne.michaelis@uni-leipzig.de, llerose@uclan.ac.uk

Course level:Intermediate

Course prerequisites

If you are interested in creoles and sign languages, and ready to consider the challenges of comparing languages that inhabit different modalities (aural-oral and visual-gestural, respectively) then we encourage you to join us! Creole studies and sign language linguistics are both relatively niche; we are aware that students may not have prior knowledge of either. We ask that you bring an open and enquiring mind, a willingness to ask questions, and a readiness to engage with the literature we have specified.

Course description

It has often been said that sign languages and creole languages share linguistic and sociolinguistic properties (e.g. Woodward, 1973, Adone, 2012, and Bakker 2015). We are a deaf/hearing UK/German team from the CrossMoGram project, which seeks to test these assertions by comparing the grammaticalisation of aspect markers in 50 creoles and seven sign languages, providing a maximally diverse sample for each language type.

In this course, we examine how the grammars of sign languages and creoles change over time, and how we can measure grammaticalisation. Modality differences in articulation mean that some of the parameters used for spoken languages require adaptation if these parameters are to take the world’s languages into account.

We use examples, interactive teaching methods (such as using a database of creoles, and examining sign language data using ELAN) and group discussion to learn together. By the end of the course, you will have a better understanding of these two language types, which are still often overlooked, stigmatized or misunderstood; and researchers will have new perspectives on the grammar of other non-creole spoken languages.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Comparing cross-modally, and introducing sign language linguistics (including phonology)
Tuesday: The morphosyntax of creoles and sign languages
Wednesday: Applying grammaticalisation theory cross-modally
Thursday: Categorising grammatical markers cross-modally
Friday: Drawing conclusions – how similar are creoles and sign languages?

Background and preparatory readings

A PDF of all publications below will be sent via zipfile one month before the course begins.

Zeshan, U. & N. Palfreyman (2017) Sign language typology. In A.Y. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology, 178-216 – to introduce modality differences.
Winford, D. (2018) Creole Tense-Mood-Aspect systems. Annual Review of Linguistics 4:193–212 – to introduce aspectual systems in creoles and examples of grammaticalization.

Course readings

Class 1: Fenlon, J., K. Cormier & D. Brentari (2017). The phonology of sign languages. In S. J. Hannahs & A. Bosch (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Phonological Theory: Routledge – to introduce sign language linguistics at the phonological level (Sections 1 and 2 only, 12 pages).

Class 2: Boland, J.H.G. (2006) Aspect, tense and modality: Theory, typology, acquisition. pp.42-52 – to prepare you for the different types of aspect we encounter (10 pages).

Class 3: Bisang, W., A. Malchukov, I. Rieder and Linlin Sun (2020) Measuring grammaticalisation: A questionnaire. In: W. Bisang and A. Malchukov (eds). Volume 1: Grammaticalization Scenarios from Europe and Asia. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp89-104 – to familiarise yourself with the MAGRAM parameters (15 pages).

Class 4: Bruyn, A. (2008). Grammaticalization in Pidgins and Creoles. In: S. Kouwenberg and J.V. Singler (eds.). The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies. Oxford: Blackwell. – a rare cross-creole study that discusses internal vs. external/apparent grammaticalisation (26 pages, which is too long, so please skip Section 2, as we will already have covered this!).

Class 5: Schembri, A., J. Fenlon, K. Cormier and T. Johnston. 2018. Sociolinguistic typology and sign languages. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. – to explore the potential impact of different sign language settings on grammaticalisation (8 pages).

*CANCELLED* Describing linguistic worldviews

Unfortunately, this course has been cancelled.

Teacher: Sara Petrollino

Contact

Affiliation: Leiden University Centre for Linguistics

Email address: s.petrollino@hum.leidenuniv.nl

http://website teacher/: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/sara-petrollino#tab-1

Course level:Intermediate

Course prerequisites

Students should have been exposed to topics in descriptive linguistics, typology, semantics, pragmatics, field methods. Students should read the suggested preparatory readings listed below.

Course description

The worldview of a people is their way of looking at reality, or in other words, the basic assumptions that users of a language hold about reality (Kearney 1984). The study of linguistic worldviews consists of looking at the emic categorization of knowledge within a linguaculture. This is achieved by investigating the linguistic categories that people use to describe and make sense of the world around them.

This course will introduce the methodologies for the study of the categorization of knowledge, and the tools to represent the internal logic of the categories. This will be achieved by reviewing selected case studies and analysing specific conceptual domains, such as the body, the environment (flora and fauna), space, time and visual perception. Participants will be able to apply some of the methodology on the languages they speak and/or work on, and they will learn how to discover and analyse cultural taxonomies through an ethnolinguistic lens.

Day-to-day programme

Monday: Introduction to worldview

In this class we will introduce the study of linguistic worldviews and the related practices and methods applied therein. The class will highlight the crucial role of semantics in linguistic description, and we will evaluate various approaches to the study and representation of meaning as a key to understanding worldviews.

Tuesday: From color linguistics to the linguistics of appearance

Worldviews are rooted in perception “for the senses are the portal through which the brain receives information about external reality” (Kearney 1984). Through

language, we make sense and talk about the information acquired by the senses. In this class we will focus on visual perception, including the categorization of color, shape, size and so on, and we will review the methods used to investigate this domain. We will compare the cross-linguistic variation in the expressions and conceptualizations of visual experience drawing examples from Anglo-European and African pastoralists’ worldviews.

Wednesday: Linguistic conceptualizations of the environment

Since languages offer a conceptual framework for worldviews, through language description we can study the cross-linguistic expressions and conceptualizations of the environment. How is knowledge of the environment expressed in language, and how can we study these worlds of knowledge? Topics discussed in this class include ethno-taxonomies, ethnobiology, and cross-cultural conceptualizations and expressions of weather, landscapes and lifeforms.

Thursday: Linguistic and cultural strategies of framing space and time

Space and time are fundamental dimensions of human experience: we live in space and through time. The Kantian idea of a universal and body-centred frame of spatial orientation has been challenged by the work of Levinson (1996) and his colleagues, however the domain of time still poses questions in terms of its underlying structures and conceptualization. In this class we will begin from the discussion of spatial frames of reference and we will then move on to the domain of time, to discuss ways in which we can study its linguistic expressions. Are the underlying structures of space and time similar? Can spatial frames of reference be applied to the domain of time? Other topics discussed in this class will be the distinction of time-based vs. event-based linguacultural systems, and time in grammar (e.g. typological variation in deictic day terms).

Friday: Final remarks and discussion

In the last class we will evaluate the approaches and methods discussed during the week and explain the link between language, cultural domains, and worldviews. Students will be invited to bring to class their own linguistic examples and reflect on the cultural domains discussed during the week. We will discuss ad-hoc techniques and methods that can be applied on a case-by-case basis.

Background and preparatory readings

Required:

Hill JH. 1988. Language, culture, and world-view. In: Newmeyer FJ, ed.Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey. Cambridge University Press. pp. 14-36. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620577.003
Verspoor, Marjolyn, and René Dirven. 2004. Chapter 6: Language, culture and meaning. InCognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing. Pp. 127-148

Course readings

Class 1

Bohnemeyer, Jürgen 2015. A Practical Epistemology for Semantic Elicitation in the Field and Elsewhere. In M. Ryan Bochnak & Lisa Matthewson (eds.)Methodologies in Semantic Fieldwork, 13-45. Oxford: OUP.

Class 2

Wierzbicka, Anna. 2007. ‘Shape and Colour in Language and Thought’. In Mental States. Vol. 2: Language and Cognitive Structure, edited by Drew Khlentzos and Andrea C. Schalley, 37–60. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Class 3

Bromhead, Helen. 2011. “Ethnogeographical categories in English and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara.” Language Sciences 33(1). 58-75.

Class 4

Dahl, Øyvind. 1995. When the future comes from behind. Malagasy and other time conceptsand some consequences for communication. International Journal of Intercultural Relations19 (2). 197–209

Class 5

Haviland, John. 2006. Documenting Lexical Knowledge. In Jost Gippert, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann & Ulrike Mosel (eds.) Essentials of Language Documentation, 129-162. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Further readings

Boroditsky, Lera. 2001. Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers’conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology43 (1). 1–22
Brown, Penelope. 2012. Time and space in Tzeltal. Is the future uphill? Frontiers in Psychology3 (212). DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00212.
Cablitz, Gabriele H. 2011. Documenting cultural knowledge in dictionaries of endangered languages. International Journal of Lexicography 24(4). 446-462.
Gladkova, Anna. 2014. Ethnosyntax. In Sharifian, Farzad, ed. The Routledge handbook of language and culture. Routledge, 49-66.
Kearney, M. (1984). World view. Chandler & Sharp.
Lucy, John A. 1997. ‘The Linguistics of “Color”’. In Color Categories in Thought and Language, edited by C. L. Hardin and Luisa Maffi, 320–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511519819.015.
Majid, Asifa. 2012. A guide to stimulus-based elicitation for semantic categories. In Nick Thieberger (ed.),The Oxford handbook of linguistic fieldwork, 54-71. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1979. ‘Ethno-Syntax and the Philosophy of Grammar’. Studies in Language. International Journal Sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” 3 (3): 313–83. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.3.3.03wie.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 2008. ‘Why There Are No “Colour Universals” in Language and Thought’. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14 (2): 407–25.
Sapir, Edward (1912). Language and Environment. In Selected Writings in Language, Culture, and Personality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 89-104

Element Theory

Teacher: Bert Botma

Affiliation: Leiden University Centre for Linguistics

Email address: e.d.botma@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Website teacher: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/bert-botma

Course level:Intermediate

Course prerequisites

Participants should have done BA (and preferably MA) level courses in phonology. No prior knowledge of Element Theory or related approaches (e.g. Government Phonology) is assumed.

Course description

This course examines the internal structure of speech sounds from the perspective of Element Theory. Element Theory offers a restrictive approach to phonological contrasts in terms of elements rather than traditional features. We will assess the advantages and drawbacks of this approach, by considering a range of phonological phenomena from a wide variety of languages. During the course we will go through Phillip Backley’s textbook on Element Theory (Backley 2011), covering one chapter per day.

Day-to-day programme

(The topics refer to the chapters in the textbook.)

Monday: Introduction: A theory of elements
Tuesday: Elements for vowels
Wednesday: Place elements in consonants
Thursday: Manner elements in consonants
Friday: Liquids, licensing and antagonistic elements

Background and preparatory readings

Backley, Phillip. 2011. An Introduction to Element Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Press.

Course readings

Class 1: Backley (2011), chapter 1
Class 2: Backley (2011), chapter 2
Class 3: Backley (2011), chapter 3
Class 4: Backley (2011), chapter 4
Class 5: Backley (2011), chapter 5

Further readings

Harris, John & Edmund Gussmann. 2002. Word-final onsets. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 1–42. [https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/PUB/WPL/02papers/harris_gussmann.pdf]

LOT Summer School 2024 - LOT – Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (2024)

Teacher: Prof. dr. Rik Vosters

Teacher: Marina Sbisà

Teacher: Professor Michelle Sheehan

Teacher: M. Carmen Parafita Couto

Teacher: Sandy Barasa

Teacher: Dr. Hans Rutger Bosker

Teacher: Birgit Alber

Teacher: Malte Zimmermann

Teacher: Gunther De Vogelaer

Teachers: Jelena Prokic & Matthew Sung

Teacher: Prof. Dr. Christian Dobel

Teacher: Stéphane Térosier

Teacher: Prof. dr. Claartje Levelt

Teacher: Hielke Vriesendorp

Teacher: Thomas Van Hoey

Teachers: Luigi Lerose1, Susanne Maria Michaelis2, Nick Palfreyman1

Unfortunately, this course has been cancelled.

Teacher: Sara Petrollino

Teacher: Bert Botma

Teachers: Luigi Lerose¹, Susanne Maria Michaelis², Nick Palfreyman¹