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HG 8001 Language Puzzle: The Study of Human Language 2013

Subject Description

This course is an introduction to the study of human language: its origins, evolution, history, structure, and use. You will be taken on a tour of ‘the world of language’ and shown what linguists, biologists, psychologists and sociologists have found out about the many fascinating aspects of language, and how they have attempted to unveil the mystery of human language.

In this module, we will discuss such questions as:

• Where might human language have come from? • In what ways is human language different from animal communication? • Can animals be taught to use language? • Why has language developed in the course of evolution? • What is the relationship between language and culture? • How do children learn to speak? • What makes a language different from a dialect? • Can we “speak” without language? • Is English sexist? • What is good English? • Is Chinese a monosyllabic language?

Lecture Time: 4:30pm – 7:30pm Tuesday (Lectures only) Venue: LT 1 Coordinator: Associate Professor Ng Bee Chin mbcng@ntu.edu.sg; Ph: 6790 4329 Office: HSS 03-52 Lim Ni Eng limnieng@ntu.edu.sg; Ph: 6592 7880 Office: HSS 03-40

Assessment Continuous Assessment (40%) 2 in-class multiple-choice quizzes Week 6 – 19th February Week 12 - 2th April

Exam (60%) Multiple-choice questions + short answers 30th April, 5pm

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HG801 Language Puzzle: The Study of Human Language

Course outline Week Topic Readings

1 15th Jan Introduction: -What is the language puzzle? “The Secret of the Wild Child”

*Crystal, D. NBC

2 22th Jan Animal Communication Birds, bees, chimps and dolphins – Do they talk? How are we different?

*Chapter 1 & **pdf

NBC

3 29th Jan Child Language kaikai, kaka, mummum, pompom – do all babies use babytalk? How do they learn? Do they copy grownups around them? Is language learning easier when you are younger?

*Chapter 8 & **pdf

NBC

4 5th Feb Signed Language & Deaf Communities Is sign language really a language? Is signing a “handicapped” form of communication?

*Chapter 9 & **pdf

NBC

5 12th Feb Words and their structure: What does kini mean in bikini and monokini? Why is pickpocket not a pocket?

*Chapter 4 Online exercises

LNE

6 19th Feb Words and their Meanings: Making sense of words and sentences • Are you vague? Or are you ambiguous? • A small elephant and a big mouse, which one is bigger?

*Chapter 6 **pdf Quiz 1

NBC

7 26th Feb Sentence structure: From words to sentences Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana Yoda: “Hard to see, the dark side is.” What is wrong with

Yoda’s grammar?

*Chapter 5

LNE

8 RECESS

9 12th Mar Sound systems: Consonants and vowels • Decipher this Hokkien sentence: “gong gong gong, gong gong

gong gong, gong gong gong gong” • Are some sounds harder to learn than others?

*Chapter 2 & Online exercises

LNE

10 19th Mar Language and Speakers • Hokkien is a dialect and Mandarin Chinese is a language.

True or false? • How does one speak like an “Ah Beng”?

*Chapter 7 & **pdf

LNE

11 26th Mar Writing Systems • Which came first? Writing or Speech? • Is “chiong-ing” a English, Chinese or Hokkien word? • Isspacinganecessaryrequirementinwriting?

*Chapter 10 & **pdf

LNE

12 2th Apr Human Communication: Language and its non-verbal modalities • Do you mean nothing when you say nothing? • “Eyes are the window to the human soul”: How true is this?

*Chapter 11 **pdf Quiz 2

LNE

13 9th Apr Language and Gender • “Good girls don’t swear.” True or False? • There are 2000 abuse terms especially for women and only 3

for men. True or False? • Course review

Ng & Burridge (1999)

NBC

*readings which will be examined in both the quizzes and the exams **about 30% of the assessment in the exam will be based on this category of readings

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Prescribed Textbook: Rowe, Bruce M. and Levine, Diane P. 2012. A Concise Introduction to Linguistics, Pearson

Education, 3rd Edition. Reference Texts: Akimoto, Minoji. 2001. How far has far from become grammaticalized? In

Laurel Brinton (ed.) Historical linguistics 1999: selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 1-11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Baker, Mark. 2001. The atom of language: The mind’s hidden rules of grammar. New York: Basic Books.

Blackmore, Susan. 2000. The Meme Machine. Oxford University Press. BF357.B629 Christopher, Lyons. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crystal, David. 2002. The English Language. Penguin Books. PE1072.C957E Crystal, David. 2003. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 2nd Edition.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. PE1072.C957 Crystal, David. 2006 How Language Works: How Babies babble, Words Change Meaning, and

languages Live or Die. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press. P121.C7C957 De Francis, John. 1986. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of

Hawaii Press. PL1171.D316 Deacon, Terrence W. 1997. The Symbolic Species: the co-evolution of language and the brain.

New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company. QP399.D278 Deutscher, Guy. 2005. The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s

Greatest Invention. New York : Metropolitan Books. P116.D486 Dunbar, Robin. 2004. Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language New ed. London: Faber

and Faber. HM1206.D899 Ellis, Rod. 1994. The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haegeman, Liliane. 2006. Think Syntactically: A Guide to Argumentation and Analysis. Malden,

Oxford and MA: Blackwell. Ng Bee Chin 1999. Writing" the Female Radical: The encoding of women in the Chinese

writing system. In Antonia Finnane and Anne McLaren (eds) Female Matters: The Construction of the Chinese Woman. Melbourne: Asia Pacific Institute Press. (with Kate Burridge)

O’Grady, William. 2005. How Children Learn Language. Cambridge University Press. P118.G35 (Not on Reserve)

Pinker, Steven. (2007, Sept. 30). How do we Come up with Words? The Los Angeles Times. Pinker, Steven. 1995. The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language. New York:

HarperPerennial. P106.P655A Richards, Jack. 1974. A non-Contrastive Approach to Error Analysis. In Jack Richards (eds).

Error Analysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition, 172-188. London: Longman. Sampson, Geoffrey. 2005. The Language Instinct Debate. London/New York: Continuum.

P37.5.I55S192 Yule, George 2006. The Study of Language, 3rd Edition, Cambridge University Press. P107.Y95