UPDATE: Syntax II is getting closer and closer to the cap. We CANNOT up this class again. If it fills up again and you aren't in the class you'll have to hope someone drops. If you want to take it, please don't wait to register!
Friday, November 9, 2012
More seats added (UPDATED)
More seats have been added to LING 4053 Morphology and LING 4330 Syntax II. If you were hoping to get into either and were unable earlier, now is your chance. Please spread the word.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Scott's blog
My friend and collaborator, Scott Jackson, just opened up his own language science blog. You should check it out. It focused largely on psycholinguistics and stats, so if that piques your interest...
http://shoestringpsycholing.github.com/
Scott and I have a formal project that we hope to have complete by early next year. So I'm sure there'll be some overlapping posts as both sites soon...
http://shoestringpsycholing.github.com/
Scott and I have a formal project that we hope to have complete by early next year. So I'm sure there'll be some overlapping posts as both sites soon...
Monday, October 29, 2012
Gratitude
I want to take a moment to express some gratitude to some really amazing people.
First, it was with some sadness that I had to say goodbye to Megan Stone today as she heads back to Austin. Her talk on Friday was fantastic. She had a very interesting study with very interesting results. It was energetic and fun and perfectly pitched. What made it all the more amazing was that she came up here at her own expense.
It was great to have her up here. We got a start on a survey/discussion article on the place of idioms in grammatical theory we hope to have out in a couple of months as well. So be on the look out for that.
I also want to thank the students who showed up to her talk. You all were fantastic. Dr. Haag and I were blown away by the number of students there and the level of engagement. Fantastic questions and comments. You all really should levels of understanding well beyond your academic level. I was very proud to be associated with you.
For those of you outside Norman, the attendance was all the more impressive because we were butting up against one of the biggest football games in OU's history (and if you know anything about OU football). ESPN had a stage right outside our building. Campus was a zoo. It was a pain in the rear to get into the building.
Overall, just very blessed to have the friends/colleagues and students that I do. Y'all rock!
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Lingua Article available
My Lingua article "Three forms of English verb particle constructions" is now available online.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384112002069
If you do not have institutional access, please email me (punske@ou.edu) and I will be happy to share.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384112002069
If you do not have institutional access, please email me (punske@ou.edu) and I will be happy to share.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Old Friends
I'm currently sitting in my office handling some clerical stuff for my classes while Megan Stone reviews her talk for this afternoon.
Life is good!
If you are in Norman, be sure to come to Megans' talk!
Life is good!
If you are in Norman, be sure to come to Megans' talk!
Monday, October 8, 2012
ALC 6
I want to give a special nod to all the organizers and presenters at ALC 6 at the University of Arizona. I was not there this year but everything I've heard about it suggests that it was a great success. That conference has a very special place in my heart since Yosuke Sato and I organized the first meeting. I am so proud to see it continue and develop. Fantastic work! I wish I had been there to enjoy it.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Phonology and undergraduate education
AKA: Why Phonology should be a required course for all undergraduates
Most undergraduate linguistics majors will not become professional linguists. That's a good thing. The job market is tough enough as it is :-) But I want to write about what skills these undergraduates get that can apply to the other domains of their life in a way that is relevant. Hopefully, this can be part of a series. But I want to make sure I cover what I think is the most important piece of an linguistics undergrad's education-- phonology.
Linguistic undergraduates struggle the most with phonology. I know that there are certainly individual exceptions or perhaps larger groups that excel, but overall I suspect that your average undergraduate struggles the most in phonology. Why?
I think it is a complicated question, but the hypothesis I've come up with doesn't necessarily paint a pretty picture for the state of undergraduate education globally. I think phonology requires a level of comfort with dealing with the unfamiliar that students simply aren't receiving elsewhere. Students struggle with phonology because there are typically multiple paths to the correct answer; they must create, analyze and evaluate each of these paths. Individually, these are skills that students develop elsewhere-- it is tying them all together that seems so problematic.
Also, because there are often multiple paths, there are can be multiple "correct" answers. Or, at the very least, fundamentally different answers on a scale of "correct". This is a huge challenge for students used to a call and response style of education.
Overall, I think linguistics does a good job globally of developing these skills. But I believe it is particularly pronounced in phonology. I've taught or am teaching an undergraduate course on every major subarea except phonetics. All of them have something unique and important to offer, no class in a linguistics program is unnecessary or not useful. But I will take syntax (though semantics could work as well) as a comparison.
Syntax and phonology pedagogy share a lot in common. Typically, students deal with an increasingly challenging set of problems over the course of a term and with each set and accompanying discussion they develop the (toy) framework developed in the course. So, we could ask what makes them different?
To my mind, because Syntax has so much accompanying formalism and theoretic grounding homework problems and other exercises tend to be more like high schools math problems. There is a straightforward mechanism for solving the problem. There is a limited set of correct answers. Sure, syntax instructors normally throw an open-ended challenge problem or two at students, but a student can easily pass syntax by just learning how to properly apply the principles learned in class. (Not that this is necessarily EASY. Nor is it unimportant by any stretch.)
But how does this compare to phonology? When I teach phonology and when I have seen it taught the formalism tends to be much more minimal than what is required in Syntax. Many instructors (myself included) stick with formalism out of SPE. Others cover OT as well-- but even then, there is considerably less formal "baggage" (for lack of a better word). Students more or less get all the formalism they will need within the first few weeks (obviously, the formalism advances throughout the course as well but at a much slower pace). Students are essentially asked to do a lot more with a lot less. The burden of advancing their understanding comes not so much from lecture, but from solving problems themselves.
So while there is typically only one correct way to draw a syntactic tree (barring ambiguity), there may be multiple paths to deriving a allophonic distribution. Typically there is one "best" path (though not always).The challenge to the student is to develop these paths and evaluate them. This is not easy. And students often come in complacent in the idea that just applying some principles should be sufficient. It isn't.
For every proposed solution we have (in phonology, in life). We must always compare the alternatives and evaluate them appropriately. This idea seems to terrify students when they first walk into a phonology class. Though, I'm very glad that they walk in. I wish more would.
Most undergraduate linguistics majors will not become professional linguists. That's a good thing. The job market is tough enough as it is :-) But I want to write about what skills these undergraduates get that can apply to the other domains of their life in a way that is relevant. Hopefully, this can be part of a series. But I want to make sure I cover what I think is the most important piece of an linguistics undergrad's education-- phonology.
Linguistic undergraduates struggle the most with phonology. I know that there are certainly individual exceptions or perhaps larger groups that excel, but overall I suspect that your average undergraduate struggles the most in phonology. Why?
I think it is a complicated question, but the hypothesis I've come up with doesn't necessarily paint a pretty picture for the state of undergraduate education globally. I think phonology requires a level of comfort with dealing with the unfamiliar that students simply aren't receiving elsewhere. Students struggle with phonology because there are typically multiple paths to the correct answer; they must create, analyze and evaluate each of these paths. Individually, these are skills that students develop elsewhere-- it is tying them all together that seems so problematic.
Also, because there are often multiple paths, there are can be multiple "correct" answers. Or, at the very least, fundamentally different answers on a scale of "correct". This is a huge challenge for students used to a call and response style of education.
Overall, I think linguistics does a good job globally of developing these skills. But I believe it is particularly pronounced in phonology. I've taught or am teaching an undergraduate course on every major subarea except phonetics. All of them have something unique and important to offer, no class in a linguistics program is unnecessary or not useful. But I will take syntax (though semantics could work as well) as a comparison.
Syntax and phonology pedagogy share a lot in common. Typically, students deal with an increasingly challenging set of problems over the course of a term and with each set and accompanying discussion they develop the (toy) framework developed in the course. So, we could ask what makes them different?
To my mind, because Syntax has so much accompanying formalism and theoretic grounding homework problems and other exercises tend to be more like high schools math problems. There is a straightforward mechanism for solving the problem. There is a limited set of correct answers. Sure, syntax instructors normally throw an open-ended challenge problem or two at students, but a student can easily pass syntax by just learning how to properly apply the principles learned in class. (Not that this is necessarily EASY. Nor is it unimportant by any stretch.)
But how does this compare to phonology? When I teach phonology and when I have seen it taught the formalism tends to be much more minimal than what is required in Syntax. Many instructors (myself included) stick with formalism out of SPE. Others cover OT as well-- but even then, there is considerably less formal "baggage" (for lack of a better word). Students more or less get all the formalism they will need within the first few weeks (obviously, the formalism advances throughout the course as well but at a much slower pace). Students are essentially asked to do a lot more with a lot less. The burden of advancing their understanding comes not so much from lecture, but from solving problems themselves.
So while there is typically only one correct way to draw a syntactic tree (barring ambiguity), there may be multiple paths to deriving a allophonic distribution. Typically there is one "best" path (though not always).The challenge to the student is to develop these paths and evaluate them. This is not easy. And students often come in complacent in the idea that just applying some principles should be sufficient. It isn't.
For every proposed solution we have (in phonology, in life). We must always compare the alternatives and evaluate them appropriately. This idea seems to terrify students when they first walk into a phonology class. Though, I'm very glad that they walk in. I wish more would.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)