Academics

Everyone speaks a language, often more than one. But how do languages actually work? As a class, we'll work directly with a speaker of an unfamiliar language to figure out how it's organized, while using it to shed light on Language more generally. We'll practice collaborative linguistic fieldwork and language documentation, cover basic concepts in linguistic theory to help make sense of what we find, and counter some common linguistic myths. We'll address a range of questions like: How different can languages be from one to another? How typical - or unusual - is English? How does a language become endangered, and what can be done about it? And what are our responsibilities as researchers towards the people we work with?