Undergraduate Course: Linguistic Fieldwork and Language Description (LASC10050)
Course Outline
| School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | In this course, students gain expertise in methodologies that enable them to study linguistic phenomena first-hand, using data that they themselves collect from a native-speaker consultant and then proceed to process and analyse. Through sessions with a native speaker of an unfamiliar language, the students experience the stages of discovery, confusion, and hypothesis-testing that are inherent to the study of undocumented language phenomena. The lectures and the readings support this process, by offering insight into a wide range of language structures at different levels of the grammar.
The course covers the following general topics: (1) approaches and issues in fieldwork data collection; (2) analysing the sound system of an unfamiliar language; (3) analysing the morphology, syntax, and semantics of an unfamiliar language. These topics are explored through lectures, data collection sessions with a native speaker consultant, readings, and two project papers.
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| Course description |
There are two main components to this course: data collection sessions (two classes per week) and discussion sessions (one class per week).
The data collection sessions with a native speaker consultant form the backbone of this course. Active participation is essential here. Initially, students take turns eliciting data from the speaker. It is the responsibility of each student to plan their data collection, and to analyse the data. These sessions will be recorded, and the data will be made available to all students after the session. The class works together to process, store, and distribute the data. Towards the end of the course, students work with the speaker to analyse a naturalistic text in the target language, which complements the elicited data.
In the discussion sessions, the class meets without the native speaker consultant. The format of these sessions varies, depending on what challenges the data present. For example, we might discuss possible analyses of the data, formulate hypotheses, and plan what data we could collect to choose between competing hypotheses. Sometimes there may be mini-lectures on a particular phenomenon that we have come across in the target language, to help guide students in their analysis of the data.
The classes are supplemented by additional weekly readings, which will help to broaden and deepen students skills in data collection and analysis.
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have a good background in linguistic theory, sufficient to take LEL Honours courses. They should have completed at least 3 Linguistics/Language Sciences courses at grade B or above. We will only consider University/College level courses. Courses in the structure of a foreign language (including English) are unlikely to suffice, but this will depend on the circumstances; please consult the CO if unsure. |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
196 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course is assessed in three ways:
Participation worth 15% - Students in this course spend most of their course time collecting data from the language consultant (research participant) in the form of audio and video recordings. They then practice research skills by organizing the data, creating summaries of the content in each file, and uploading the recordings and their notes to a class website. The students are also required to prepare for their data collection sessions and share their preparation/reflection on each session via the class discussion board. All of these activities mirror the professional skills which students would use to conduct linguistic fieldwork.
Short Essay worth 35% - This essay describes the phonological (sound) system of the language studied by the class, based on the first-hand data collected with our language expert (research participant). 1500-2000 words.
Long Essay worth 50% - It describes a topic in the morphological (word) or syntactic (sentence) structure of the language, also based on first-hand data collection. 3000-3500 words.
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| Feedback |
The first project paper is submitted halfway through the course. Soon afterwards, the lecturer meets individually with each student to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this paper. In this way, feedback on the first project paper will inform both the linguistic analysis and the academic writing in the final project paper, on the basis of which 50% of the overall mark is awarded. In this way formative feedback can play an important role in helping the students to improve |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Identify and apply appropriate data collection techniques.
- Independently process and analyze linguistic data.
- Develop a descriptive analysis through a dialectic between data collection and reflection upon those data.
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Reading List
Many of the readings come from the following texts:
Bowern, Claire, 2015. Linguistic fieldwork: A practical guide. Second edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Other readings will be made available at the beginning of the course, via the Resource List on Learn.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Data analysis: The students are responsible for the processing and analysis of their raw session notes after each of the elicitation sessions, and this work is critical to the quality of the project papers.
Teamwork: a) The students are responsible for the recording, storage, processing, and distribution of audio data; b) The students work together during the elicitation sessions.
Social skills / cross-cultural communication: The native speaker consultant is typically from a non-Western background. The students establish and develop a social relationship with the speaker.
Effort and diligence: The course has a relatively high workload, and the various tasks (preparing materials for elicitation, processing of data) need to happen on a regular basis for analytic insight to develop.
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| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Amalia Skilton
Tel:
Email: askilton@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Susan Hermiston
Tel: (0131 6)50 3440
Email: Susan.Hermiston@ed.ac.uk |
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