FUNKNET Digest, Vol 87, Issue 6
s.t. bischoff
bischoff.st at gmail.com
Wed Dec 8 20:41:24 UTC 2010
William McGregor has a "functionalist" introductory textbook
"Linguistics: An introduction"...you may also find "Language Myths"
edited by Laure Bauer and Peter Trudgill of interest.
On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:00 PM, <funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Alternative Intro Ling courses (Johanna Rubba)
> 2. Re: Alternative Intro Ling courses (jlmendi at unizar.es)
> 3. Re: Alternative Intro Ling courses (Angus B. Grieve-Smith)
> 4. Re: Alternative Intro Ling courses (Mark P. Line)
> 5. Re: Alternative Intro Ling courses (Wendy Smith)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 15:00:03 -0800
> From: Johanna Rubba <jrubba at calpoly.edu>
> Subject: [FUNKNET] Alternative Intro Ling courses
> To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID: <8505D88E-02F1-4275-9DD8-DCB88086A75B at calpoly.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>
> Hi,
>
> Is anyone else out there looking for a textbook for intro linguistics for non-majors that does not take an exclusively generative line? Does anyone know of books that deal primarily with aspects of language that are practically useful for non-majors? Well-educated citizens need to know about things like language/dialect prejudice, myths concerning bilingual education, myths concerning first-language acquisition, some information about language history and the history of English, the horrendous state of grammar instruction in our schools, the fakeness of "language experts" like John Simon, propaganda techniques, results of critical discourse analysis concerning things like racism, sexism and heterosexism, language policy, the role of frames/schemas in everyday life, pragmatics and speech acts, a deeper understanding of semantics beyond entailment, implicature, semantic features, utterance vs. sentence meaning, and the "nyms," the role of information flow in discourse structure
> , and perhaps a basic understanding of how linguistics can be applied to the study of literature (for English majors, at least; most of my intro students are English majors).
>
> I know that a number of these topics are covered in existing textbooks, but a number are not. Also, existing textbooks do a poor job of addressing the lexicon, if they address it at all. The work that has been done on the network model, usage-based models, prototypes, categorization, and the role of schemas/frames in word definition are lacking in most textbooks (some allude to prototype theory, but very cursorily).
>
> Intro textbooks, even those that advertise themselves as being for non-linguists, such as Parker & Riley's _Linguistics for non-linguists_ and Denham and Lobeck's _Linguistics for everyone_, fill their pages mostly with the core subjects (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and the poor treatment of semantics described above). They do have a significant amount of space devoted to some of the above topics, but I don't think teachers can deal with all of them in a single term (and especially not a ten-week quarter, which it is my fate to teach in). And too many textbooks teach generative theory as god's truth; they address counterarguments minimally, and often by trundling out old data, like island constraints. They bring in data that, from their point of view, prove modularity and Universal Grammar, but they never address specifically any arguments that non-generativists make; they simply say that the data (e.g., genetic language disability or "linguistic savants") prove
> their theory beyond the shadow of a doubt. One could easily get the impression that they don't think of their theory as theory (whether they intend this or not), but as proven fact, with any challenges not being worthy of their attention.
>
> People are still writing these textbooks as though we are training future linguists who already have an intrinsic interest in the details of language structure. I have ten weeks to give my students their only introduction to the scientific study of language. I don't see any point in these students learning to solve phonology problems or draw tree diagrams for a tiny fraction of the sentence types that exist in English. I don't see the point of having them learn how to build a linguistic argument based on structural data. I'm not even sure how important it is for them to understand speech articulation in the detail seen in most intro ling textbooks. I'd far prefer that they learn to think critically about the language ? and language about language ? that exists around them. I'm sure this would engage them far more (my most popular course is Language and Gender). When I do exit surveys in my classes, I ask for the most important single idea they will take away from my course.
> The vast majority of the students respond with something about dialect prejudice. Many, many say they will never again judge a person based on the way they speak. There may have been some students who have mentioned learning to solve phonology problems or drawing tree diagrams, but I could count them on one hand. Students seem to *want* the understanding of language that they *need*.
>
> It would be interesting to know what most linguists believe is necessary knowledge about language for the non-major. Many, many linguists work at institutions at which they never train graduate students and have teaching loads and service obligations that severely limit their research efforts (like me; I teach nine courses in the typical year, and do an average amount of committee work, which I actually like to do). Many of us teach only courses that require no previous linguistics training.
>
> I'm teaching intro ling to English majors in winter quarter (starts early Jan.). I'm going to spend my winter break thinking up field exercises or activities that will "sex up" the course. And I'm using Language Files 10th edition. Not a great book, but I haven't found a better one for undergraduates. Finegan's _Language: its structure and use_ covers a lot of the territory I'm looking for, but it's not easily managed on a quarter system, the chapters on phonology and syntax are confusing, and the level may be above what my undergrads can handle.
>
> Any thoughts, suggestions, practices you'd be willing to share? Or: Help!
>
> Best,
> Jo
>
> Dr. Johanna Rubba, Professor, Linguistics
> Linguistics Minor Advisor
> English Department
> California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
> E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu
> Tel.: 805.756.2184
> Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
> Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
> URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:37:42 +0100
> From: jlmendi at unizar.es
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Alternative Intro Ling courses
> To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID: <20101208163742.6fe2moz6ogss04go at webmail.unizar.es>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed"
>
> Dear Johanna:
>
> I think George Yule's popular handbook fits most of your requierements
> (I've used the second edition, but there's a new one, the fourth,
> published in 2010):
>
> Yule, George. The Study of Language. Cambridge University Press
>
> Best regards:
> Jos?-Luis Mend?vil
>
>
> Johanna Rubba <jrubba at calpoly.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is anyone else out there looking for a textbook for intro
>> linguistics for non-majors that does not take an exclusively
>> generative line? Does anyone know of books that deal primarily with
>> aspects of language that are practically useful for non-majors?
>> Well-educated citizens need to know about things like
>> language/dialect prejudice, myths concerning bilingual education,
>> myths concerning first-language acquisition, some information about
>> language history and the history of English, the horrendous state of
>> grammar instruction in our schools, the fakeness of "language
>> experts" like John Simon, propaganda techniques, results of critical
>> discourse analysis concerning things like racism, sexism and
>> heterosexism, language policy, the role of frames/schemas in
>> everyday life, pragmatics and speech acts, a deeper understanding of
>> semantics beyond entailment, implicature, semantic features,
>> utterance vs. sentence meaning, and the "nyms," the role of
>> information flow in discourse structure, and perhaps a basic
>> understanding of how linguistics can be applied to the study of
>> literature (for English majors, at least; most of my intro students
>> are English majors).
>>
>> I know that a number of these topics are covered in existing
>> textbooks, but a number are not. Also, existing textbooks do a poor
>> job of addressing the lexicon, if they address it at all. The work
>> that has been done on the network model, usage-based models,
>> prototypes, categorization, and the role of schemas/frames in word
>> definition are lacking in most textbooks (some allude to prototype
>> theory, but very cursorily).
>>
>> Intro textbooks, even those that advertise themselves as being for
>> non-linguists, such as Parker & Riley's _Linguistics for
>> non-linguists_ and Denham and Lobeck's _Linguistics for everyone_,
>> fill their pages mostly with the core subjects (phonetics,
>> phonology, morphology, syntax, and the poor treatment of semantics
>> described above). They do have a significant amount of space devoted
>> to some of the above topics, but I don't think teachers can deal
>> with all of them in a single term (and especially not a ten-week
>> quarter, which it is my fate to teach in). And too many textbooks
>> teach generative theory as god's truth; they address
>> counterarguments minimally, and often by trundling out old data,
>> like island constraints. They bring in data that, from their point
>> of view, prove modularity and Universal Grammar, but they never
>> address specifically any arguments that non-generativists make; they
>> simply say that the data (e.g., genetic language disability or
>> "linguistic savants") prove their theory beyond the shadow of a
>> doubt. One could easily get the impression that they don't think of
>> their theory as theory (whether they intend this or not), but as
>> proven fact, with any challenges not being worthy of their attention.
>>
>> People are still writing these textbooks as though we are training
>> future linguists who already have an intrinsic interest in the
>> details of language structure. I have ten weeks to give my students
>> their only introduction to the scientific study of language. I don't
>> see any point in these students learning to solve phonology
>> problems or draw tree diagrams for a tiny fraction of the sentence
>> types that exist in English. I don't see the point of having them
>> learn how to build a linguistic argument based on structural data.
>> I'm not even sure how important it is for them to understand speech
>> articulation in the detail seen in most intro ling textbooks. I'd
>> far prefer that they learn to think critically about the language ?
>> and language about language ? that exists around them. I'm sure this
>> would engage them far more (my most popular course is Language and
>> Gender). When I do exit surveys in my classes, I ask for the most
>> important single idea they will take away from my course. The vast
>> majority of the students respond with something about dialect
>> prejudice. Many, many say they will never again judge a person based
>> on the way they speak. There may have been some students who have
>> mentioned learning to solve phonology problems or drawing tree
>> diagrams, but I could count them on one hand. Students seem to
>> *want* the understanding of language that they *need*.
>>
>> It would be interesting to know what most linguists believe is
>> necessary knowledge about language for the non-major. Many, many
>> linguists work at institutions at which they never train graduate
>> students and have teaching loads and service obligations that
>> severely limit their research efforts (like me; I teach nine courses
>> in the typical year, and do an average amount of committee work,
>> which I actually like to do). Many of us teach only courses that
>> require no previous linguistics training.
>>
>> I'm teaching intro ling to English majors in winter quarter (starts
>> early Jan.). I'm going to spend my winter break thinking up field
>> exercises or activities that will "sex up" the course. And I'm using
>> Language Files 10th edition. Not a great book, but I haven't found
>> a better one for undergraduates. Finegan's _Language: its structure
>> and use_ covers a lot of the territory I'm looking for, but it's
>> not easily managed on a quarter system, the chapters on phonology
>> and syntax are confusing, and the level may be above what my
>> undergrads can handle.
>>
>> Any thoughts, suggestions, practices you'd be willing to share? Or: Help!
>>
>> Best,
>> Jo
>>
>> Dr. Johanna Rubba, Professor, Linguistics
>> Linguistics Minor Advisor
>> English Department
>> California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
>> E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu
>> Tel.: 805.756.2184
>> Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
>> Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
>> URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr Jos?-Luis Mend?vil-Gir?
> General Linguistics
> Universidad de Zaragoza
> Spain
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 10:53:49 -0500
> From: "Angus B. Grieve-Smith" <grvsmth at panix.com>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Alternative Intro Ling courses
> To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID: <4CFFAA0D.1030101 at panix.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> On 12/8/2010 10:37 AM, jlmendi at unizar.es wrote:
>> I think George Yule's popular handbook fits most of your requierements
>> (I've used the second edition, but there's a new one, the fourth,
>> published in 2010):
>>
>> Yule, George. The Study of Language. Cambridge University Press
>
> I've been using this for the past four semesters (the third and
> fourth editions), and I agree. It has the basic mainstream theoretical
> stuff, but it also covers a lot of the topics that Johanna mentions.
> It's also available as an ebook, which I've found very handy:
>
> http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=502434
>
> At Saint John's, we have a course called "Language and Culture:
> Linguistics," which is basically the kind of survey course for
> non-majors that Johanna describes. For that, we touched lightly on each
> chapter, and I assigned a few exercises from each. I supplemented it
> with a few articles (I love David Sedaris's piece about nouns and gender
> in French) and videos (such as Lakoff's presentation to Google).
>
> We also have a two-semester Introduction to Linguistics series.
> For the first semester, I've used only Chapters 3-9 and 15, but I've had
> to supplement it with material from Language Files and other sources.
> For the second semester I plan to use at least some of the rest of the book.
>
> The book doesn't say much about functional theories, but it is less
> heavy on the generative stuff.
>
> --
> -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
> Saint John's University
> grvsmth at panix.com
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 11:14:24 -0600
> From: "Mark P. Line" <mark at polymathix.com>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Alternative Intro Ling courses
> To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID:
> <4b67b2f09dc2a23538d352dc65daf328.squirrel at sm.webmail.pair.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Sounds like you need to write the textbook you envision. I'd teach from it
> in a heartbeat if you did (and if I were still teaching).
>
> Failing that, I guess you'd have to continue to wing it with DIY readings
> and exercises.
>
> If I remember right, the lecturer who taught intro ling in the English
> department where I worked simply pulled together a collection of readings
> (probably Saussure, Whorf, Bloomfield, very little from the Chomskyan era)
> and came up with his own "exhibits" from newspapers and other media to
> make the points he wanted to make (which were similar to your laundry list
> below).
>
> Just as a random example, I recall him finding two headlines for the same
> story in two different newspapers on the same day, and pointing out the
> effect of the grammatical difference between the headlines. I don't
> remember the precise example at the time, but it was along the lines of
>
> 1. Republicans Block Vote On Free Beer For All Act in Senate
> 2. Vote On Free Beer For All Act Blocked in Senate
>
> His point, of course, was that passive voice buys you the ability to play
> down the agent.
>
> -- Mark
>
> Mark P. Line
> Bartlesville, OK
>
>
>
> Johanna Rubba wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is anyone else out there looking for a textbook for intro linguistics for
>> non-majors that does not take an exclusively generative line? Does anyone
>> know of books that deal primarily with aspects of language that are
>> practically useful for non-majors? Well-educated citizens need to know
>> about things like language/dialect prejudice, myths concerning bilingual
>> education, myths concerning first-language acquisition, some information
>> about language history and the history of English, the horrendous state of
>> grammar instruction in our schools, the fakeness of "language experts"
>> like John Simon, propaganda techniques, results of critical discourse
>> analysis concerning things like racism, sexism and heterosexism, language
>> policy, the role of frames/schemas in everyday life, pragmatics and speech
>> acts, a deeper understanding of semantics beyond entailment, implicature,
>> semantic features, utterance vs. sentence meaning, and the "nyms," the
>> role of information flow in discourse structure, and perhaps a basic
>> understanding of how linguistics can be applied to the study of literature
>> (for English majors, at least; most of my intro students are English
>> majors).
>>
>> I know that a number of these topics are covered in existing textbooks,
>> but a number are not. Also, existing textbooks do a poor job of addressing
>> the lexicon, if they address it at all. The work that has been done on the
>> network model, usage-based models, prototypes, categorization, and the
>> role of schemas/frames in word definition are lacking in most textbooks
>> (some allude to prototype theory, but very cursorily).
>>
>> Intro textbooks, even those that advertise themselves as being for
>> non-linguists, such as Parker & Riley's _Linguistics for non-linguists_
>> and Denham and Lobeck's _Linguistics for everyone_, fill their pages
>> mostly with the core subjects (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax,
>> and the poor treatment of semantics described above). They do have a
>> significant amount of space devoted to some of the above topics, but I
>> don't think teachers can deal with all of them in a single term (and
>> especially not a ten-week quarter, which it is my fate to teach in). And
>> too many textbooks teach generative theory as god's truth; they address
>> counterarguments minimally, and often by trundling out old data, like
>> island constraints. They bring in data that, from their point of view,
>> prove modularity and Universal Grammar, but they never address
>> specifically any arguments that non-generativists make; they simply say
>> that the data (e.g., genetic language disability or "linguistic savants")
>> prove their theory beyond the shadow of a doubt. One could easily get the
>> impression that they don't think of their theory as theory (whether they
>> intend this or not), but as proven fact, with any challenges not being
>> worthy of their attention.
>>
>> People are still writing these textbooks as though we are training future
>> linguists who already have an intrinsic interest in the details of
>> language structure. I have ten weeks to give my students their only
>> introduction to the scientific study of language. I don't see any point in
>> these students learning to solve phonology problems or draw tree diagrams
>> for a tiny fraction of the sentence types that exist in English. I don't
>> see the point of having them learn how to build a linguistic argument
>> based on structural data. I'm not even sure how important it is for them
>> to understand speech articulation in the detail seen in most intro ling
>> textbooks. I'd far prefer that they learn to think critically about the
>> language ? and language about language ? that exists around them. I'm sure
>> this would engage them far more (my most popular course is Language and
>> Gender). When I do exit surveys in my classes, I ask for the most
>> important single idea they will take away from my course. The vast
>> majority of the students respond with something about dialect prejudice.
>> Many, many say they will never again judge a person based on the way they
>> speak. There may have been some students who have mentioned learning to
>> solve phonology problems or drawing tree diagrams, but I could count them
>> on one hand. Students seem to *want* the understanding of language that
>> they *need*.
>>
>> It would be interesting to know what most linguists believe is necessary
>> knowledge about language for the non-major. Many, many linguists work at
>> institutions at which they never train graduate students and have teaching
>> loads and service obligations that severely limit their research efforts
>> (like me; I teach nine courses in the typical year, and do an average
>> amount of committee work, which I actually like to do). Many of us teach
>> only courses that require no previous linguistics training.
>>
>> I'm teaching intro ling to English majors in winter quarter (starts early
>> Jan.). I'm going to spend my winter break thinking up field exercises or
>> activities that will "sex up" the course. And I'm using Language Files
>> 10th edition. Not a great book, but I haven't found a better one for
>> undergraduates. Finegan's _Language: its structure and use_ covers a lot
>> of the territory I'm looking for, but it's not easily managed on a quarter
>> system, the chapters on phonology and syntax are confusing, and the level
>> may be above what my undergrads can handle.
>>
>> Any thoughts, suggestions, practices you'd be willing to share? Or: Help!
>>
>> Best,
>> Jo
>>
>> Dr. Johanna Rubba, Professor, Linguistics
>> Linguistics Minor Advisor
>> English Department
>> California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
>> E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu
>> Tel.: 805.756.2184
>> Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
>> Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
>> URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 09:45:43 -0800
> From: Wendy Smith <wsmith at csusb.edu>
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Alternative Intro Ling courses
> To: "Angus B. Grieve-Smith" <grvsmth at panix.com>
> Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID: <4CFFC447.1070203 at csusb.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> I used George Yule's book one semester and found myself developing a
> huge amount of materials to supplement it. It's rather skimpy.
>
> On 12/8/2010 7:53 AM, Angus B. Grieve-Smith wrote:
>> On 12/8/2010 10:37 AM, jlmendi at unizar.es wrote:
>>> I think George Yule's popular handbook fits most of your
>>> requierements (I've used the second edition, but there's a new one,
>>> the fourth, published in 2010):
>>>
>>> Yule, George. The Study of Language. Cambridge University Press
>>
>> I've been using this for the past four semesters (the third and
>> fourth editions), and I agree. It has the basic mainstream
>> theoretical stuff, but it also covers a lot of the topics that Johanna
>> mentions. It's also available as an ebook, which I've found very handy:
>>
>> http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=502434
>>
>> At Saint John's, we have a course called "Language and Culture:
>> Linguistics," which is basically the kind of survey course for
>> non-majors that Johanna describes. For that, we touched lightly on
>> each chapter, and I assigned a few exercises from each. I
>> supplemented it with a few articles (I love David Sedaris's piece
>> about nouns and gender in French) and videos (such as Lakoff's
>> presentation to Google).
>>
>> We also have a two-semester Introduction to Linguistics series.
>> For the first semester, I've used only Chapters 3-9 and 15, but I've
>> had to supplement it with material from Language Files and other
>> sources. For the second semester I plan to use at least some of the
>> rest of the book.
>>
>> The book doesn't say much about functional theories, but it is
>> less heavy on the generative stuff.
>>
>
>
> End of FUNKNET Digest, Vol 87, Issue 6
> **************************************
>
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