175-405 Study of a Language Family

Usually 37.5 points of second/third year linguistics and applied linguistics subjecs, including 175-014 Phonetics and 175-015 Syntax.

This subject looks in detail at a little-known language family, normally from a family other than Indo-European or Australian eg. Athabaskan, Cushitic, Papuan or Austronesian, and will normally combine a first strand looking at a selected and representative language of the family with a second strand surveying general or unusual features of the language family as a whole. It will include a survey of the languages in the family, main subgroups, salient typological features and particular descriptive and analytical issues raised by the languages under study, major trends and debates in the analysis and classification of these languages, historical relations between languages of the family, areal characteristics, contemporary issues of linguistic documentation, and special sociolinguistic features of the languages under study.

For third year students, 2000 words of assignments (normally made up of two problems in linguistic analysis) and a 2000 word essay. For fourth year students, the third year requirement will be supplemented either by upgrading the essay length to 3000 words, or by keeping the 2000 word essay and adding a short class presentation on a selected aspect of the language family under study.

A subject reader will be available.