Thinking about teaching a class on Linguistics

[makvas]

So, at my university we can teach classes and get paid for this. I was thinking about teaching an introductory class on linguistics, mostly from the perspective of Describing Morphosyntax (with a bit of phonetics thrown in). I believe that I would be teaching 20 one-hour lectures over the course of a 10-week term. I'm not sure but I think I would like to have the first lecture in each week go over new material and have the second lecture just be going over examples in natural languages. Has anyone here tried to teach an intro to linguistics class before? My school doesn't have anything in the way of linguistics (unless you count plain language classes). What materials should I teach from besides DM?

Perhaps a better question: what sort of things would *you* want to learn in an introductory linguistics class?

[Gulliver]

I think Describing Morphosyntax might be a bit hard-going for an introductory class. Be prepared for people to not actually know what linguistics is, despite taking the class. During my linguistics degree, there were still some people a month in who were confusing the words grammar and vocabulary.

[makvas]

I think Describing Morphosyntax might be a bit hard-going for an introductory class. Be prepared for people to not actually know what linguistics is, despite taking the class. During my linguistics degree, there were still some people a month in who were confusing the words grammar and vocabulary.

I'm very confident this won't be a problem at my university. DM might be a bit too easy if anything.

[Rory]

You didn't mention the target audience. Are we talking freshmen, or upperclassmen? Who would want to take your course? Would it be attached to a particular department? The answers to these will determine what you should do. If the course is offered out of, say, the Spanish department, you'd want to leverage the students' likely knowledge of Spanish and English to teach linguistic concepts. If out of the psych department, you'd want a different approach. I agree with Gulliver that DM is a tough starting text, especially for people who don't know what linguistics is. Remember, not all college students are nerds like us. I'd recommend an introductory textbook, like Language Files, Introduction to Language, or Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. DM is intended for fieldworkers, and only covers a very small area of linguistics. Phonology, phonetics, comp ling, socioling, formal semantics, historical linguistics, and many other subfields are ignored. That's fine, if you're teaching a morphosyntax course - but you said you wanted to teach a linguistics course.

Also, do you have any teaching experience?

[makvas]

Remember, not all college students are nerds like us.

I go to Caltech. Everyone at this point (yes even freshmen) will have, for example, two terms of proof-intensive mathematics. Those who choose my class would be self-selecting and probably very unhappy if it wasn't technically rigorous.

Also, do you have any teaching experience?

I worked at a tutoring business for a couple summers. I don't have experience teaching a class, but I have plenty of 1-on-1 experience. If I do teach this class, it will be capped at 15 students. I have experience giving math research presentations to large crowds of people, so I'm prepared to lecture twice a week.

[finlay]

Remember, not all college students are nerds like us.

I go to Caltech. Everyone at this point (yes even freshmen) will have, for example, two terms of proof-intensive mathematics. Those who choose my class would be self-selecting and probably very unhappy if it wasn't technically rigorous.

Fine, make it technically rigorous, then. But you still have to be prepared, in what you say is an introductory class, for people who just don't know what linguistics is. Perhaps some of the others do, but you'll need to spend at least a couple of lectures getting everyone to the same level. With only 20 hours, I can't see how you can get a general overview of the subject and get into anything meaty.

[sirdanilot]

That the people you are teaching to are smart doesn't mean that they wouldn't accept an introduction to a field entirely new to them. Do you want to introduce every aspect of linguistics, including psycholinguistics, semantics, pragmatics, syntax, phonetics, phonology etc. or do you want to offer a challenging course focusing on a couple of aspects? Because I think you are looking for the latter. Go give them an introduction in generative syntax, for example, or computational semantics. These are the more 'mathsy' aspects of linguistics, after all. But even in that scenario, you will have to spend the first couple of courses explaining what the hell syntax and semantics are. Because people haven't a clue.

For Syntax, I could recommend William D. Davies and Stanley Dubinsky (2004), The grammar of raising and control. A course in syntactic argumentation. It's very much focused on that particular aspect of syntax, but if you can spend a couple of introductions explaining what raising and control are, it could be fine.

As for computational semantics, I don't know a very good book for it, but you can always use Meaning and Grammar by Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet

Really, teaching those things without a firm background of what linguistics actually is sounds a bit pointless to me. An introductory course should be just that, introductory. At the most you can give some tricky phonology puzzles or something.

[Rory]

Actually, although everyone is saying if you want it to be an introductory class it'll have to be basic, if everyone has a strong foundation in mathematics then you're in a great position for a focused course on some of the more mathematical aspects of language. Sort of sneaking into linguistics through the back door, if you will. Of course, such a course would greatly depend on your knowledge of the subject.

Some issues that could be appealing to more math-oriented folks:

• formal logic
  • propositional logic
  • algebraic logic
  • lambda calculus
  • lambek calculus
• formal languages and the Chomsky hierarchy
  • unrestricted grammars and Turing machines
  • context-sensitive grammars and linear bounded automata
  • context-free grammars and pushdown automata
  • regular languages and finite state automata
• Montague semantics and possible-world semantics
• Frame semantics and prototype theory (as a balance to Montague)

With this background, you'll be well-placed to pursue topics like the syntax of scope, the semantics of implicature, and even categorial grammar if your grounding in set theory and abstract algebra is strong enough. A potential textbook for this is Barwise et al's Language, Proof and Logic, although I'm sure there are others out there.

[makvas]

As for the mathier side of things, I do have a decent grounding in set theory, but I really don't know enough about the subject to teach it. I'd prefer to teach the class as sort of a sampler of topics in descriptive linguistics. So yes, I'll talk about phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, etc; but not really at a terribly theoretical level. The level of rigor wouldn't be much more than that of DM, which honestly isn't that difficult to understand on the first go. I don't really believe there's anyone here who doesn't know what Linguistics is, and if they don't, I would make sure they know after the first lecture.

Also, we already have a class on turing machines, automata, decidability, complexity, etc (which I am currently taking), and I wouldn't be allowed to teach a class that overlaps.

[corcaighist]

I think Describing Morphosyntax might be a bit hard-going for an introductory class. Be prepared for people to not actually know what linguistics is, despite taking the class. During my linguistics degree, there were still some people a month in who were confusing the words grammar and vocabulary.

I agree. DM is tough.

I teach socio-cultural linguistics in secondary school to 10-12 grades who have never studied linguistics before and some of things that we cover are: what a language is, what linguistics is, dialects, language and culture, endangered languages, language death, conlangs.

For intro classes it might be nice to structure your course around projects like learning an endangered language, making a conlang, doing language puzzles, things like that that allow them to enjoy working in groups and learn whilst having some fun.