Modern English Phonology 1 (U00345)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 10 ? Acronym : PPL-3-MEP1-EL

This course provides students with the opportunity to investigate many of the fundamental and characteristic features of the phonology of English. 'English' naturally needs to be understood as a series of autonomous, yet related accents, and this course considers to what extent accents share common characteristics and to what extent, and in what ways, they can be said to differ, focusing on accents from Scotland, England and North America (and briefly considering aspects of Southern-Hemisphere Englishes and Hiberno-English). It will consider issues in the 'phonemic' inventories of these accents, the nature and type of their allophonic processes, the use of distinctive features to characterise their contrasts and natural classes, their syllabic structure and phonotactic constraints, issues in word, foot and phrasal stress assignment, and issues which arise when processes seem to interact with both (i) other processes in ordering relationships and with (ii) morphological, syntactic and lexical structure.

In doing this we will consider those aspects of general phonological theory which are both relevant to and necessary for the explanation of the data. We will consider facets of the nature of phonological generalisations, of their formalisation as 'rules' and 'constraints', of the ways in which they can be thought to interact, and of the extent to which they can be thought to have exceptions.

Entry Requirements

? Pre-requisites : English Language 2 or Linguistics 2A + 2B or Linguistics 2A + 2L

? Costs : None

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Language Sciences, (School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, Schedule I)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 3rd year

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 3 hour(s) per week for 9 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
19/09/2007	12:10	13:00	Room B.B09, Adam Ferguson Building	Central

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Monday	12:10	13:00	Central
Lecture	Wednesday	12:10	13:00	Central
Lecture	Thursday	12:10	13:00	Central

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
- explain the issues involved in the description of the phonological systems of English accents;
- analyse key phenomena in the phonology of English using the fundamental tools of phonological theory;
- investigate how general issues in phonological theory hold-up when confronted with a detailed investigation of data from English;
- progress onto the study of current live research questions in English phonology and in general language-universal phonology.