This course is designed around the following goals and activities.
Late work. Although this is an online class and we therefore have certain privileges regarding how we use our time, there is much to do in this class and we cannot afford to lag behind the schedule. If you get behind, you will find it tremendously difficult to catch up again. Please be alert to the due dates and times, and be sure your work finds its way to me before the deadlines. To submit, paste your work into the body of an email message and send it to my BGSU email address: swellsj@bgsu.edu. I understand that the pace may seem extreme at times, (there will be an assignment due nearly every day) but this alas is the nature of a summer class online or face-to face. It is what we signed up for and, if you are aware of the calendar as you work, you should be fine. With so many of you in the class and so much to cover, I cannot accept late work.
Midterm: You will view a video of two people interacting in a language you do not know. You will be asked to watch the video and, using field-methods we will discuss, create a mini dictionary of the language and write a grammar sketch, including such aspects of linguistic structure such as word order, how to form various inflectional functions such as verb agreement or plurality and determine to what extent the language conforms to typological universals. It's fun and not nearly as impossible as it sounds. By the mid point in the semester, you will be able to do this without a problem.
Course Project The course project for this class is a "Prenlang": an artificial language which each of you will individually create. These created languages can be as whimsical or as serious as you wish them to be, but each will be an embodiment of the material we master along the way and each will be entirely yours. For example, we will begin the semester with a look at language and its relationship to culture. During this section of the course, you will design the people (or beasts, or objects or other fanciful beings) who speak your language, develop their culture and make some predictions about how that culture might effect that language. When we study phonetics, you will choose the consonants and vowels your language will use. By the end of the semester, you will be able to translate a very short story into your language. The URL for the PrenLang page is: www.fridaynightlinguistics.org/languagecreation/ Here you will find the assignments, examples of completed assignments, help files, extra information, extra practices: all of which probably amounts to information overload. Take your time on the page and be patient: be willing to read and reread material and ask questions. And, (very important!) enjoy the creation of your language, it takes creative energy and whimsy along with careful, logical analysis. The more care you put into its construction, the more fun you'll have.
Academic Honesty. Please be aware of, and follow, BGSU's academic honesty policies. Any violation of the academic honesty policy will be formally reported.
Accommodation. If you need accommodation for a disability, please be in touch with me. We will work out what needs to be worked out.
Difficulties, Real Life, Learning Styles and People that go Crash in the Night. Online classes are often not what we expect them to be. For many of you, this is a new experience. There are others, no doubt, who have had an online course and therefore believe they know what to expect. What I personally expect is that there will be people, both novice onliners and old pros, who will at one point or another find the structure and format of the course difficult. If this happens to you, please don't disappear. Stay in touch with me and let me help you sort through your options. Graduate school can be stressful, and sometimes an online class is more than you bargained for. Let me know how you are and what you need as the session moves along. I am available in my office for live, telephone or perhaps even skype consultations. I am interested in you and your perspectives and willing to help where I can.
How things work. Most of what you do in this class will be accomplished via email. You will email me your answers to homework problems, your questions and your general musings. I will spend a lot of time emailing also; I will try to be very available to you. There will be useful information posted on the website, readings from your book(s), websites to visit and posted homework assignments. I am also planning to experiment with sending out recorded notes , comments or minilectures in MP3 format. If you like these, I'll do more of them. If you don't like them (or don't act like you like them), I'll probably forlornly taper off after a while.
Participation. Many are the times I have thought and rethought the reasonableness of assigning a participation grade in an online class. On one hand, they can feel coercive, forcing people to contribute to conversations in which they have little interest and to which they feel they honestly have nothing to add. On the other hand, a participation percentage can serve as a welcome buffer to a grade shaped primarily by the right-and-wrong answers that comprise much of this course. The compromise that appeals to me this summer is twofold: First, although most of the homework assignments are necessarily objective in nature, there will be assignments from time to time that call for a more introspective or creative touch. There will also be assignments that are frankly much easier than others. Even given this, I still felt like adding some percentage for participation. Your participation grade will be an objective count of two things together: first, the number of times I ask the class to do things (post a quick response to the list, introduce yourself, respond to a quick question, and you do it: (note you never have to do all of everything!) Along with this, I will count the number of assignments you turn in on time.
Grading Summary:
So let's have a summary of all this:
Homework: 45%.
Midterm: 25%.
Final project write up: 20 %.
Participation: 10%.
Thank you for reading, everyone, and thank you for your willingness to participate in this class with me. I appreciate the time and commitment that goes into graduate classes, especially summer graduate classes. I know you come from a variety of experiences and perspectives, and I hope to find places where I can show you things about language and linguistics that will delight, perplex and fascinate you.