Field Methods

Catalog description

In this course, students work directly (in groups) with a native speaker of a foreign language with which no one in the class has any prior familiarity. The students will work to uncover the set of sounds relevant to the language in question by winnowing down possible sound contrasts made in human languages. They will begin to construct a lexicon (vocabulary) built with a phonetic alphabet to discover how words and sentences are formed in the language. They will refine their techniques of questioning their research participant based on principles of linguistic field work.