| Professor: | Jonathan North Washington | |
| Office: | Pearson 105 | |
| Office phone: | x6134 | |
| Office hours: | T 14:00-15:30, W 13:15-14:45 | |
| Email: | jwashin1@swarthno scrapers please...more.edu | |
| Meeting time: | M 7:00pm-9:45pm | |
| Classroom: | Pearson 005 | |
| Course website: | http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/jwashin1/ling085 | |
| Course moodle site: | S18 - LING085.01 | |
The goal of this course is to acquaint you with a range of topics in and ways of thinking about Phonology by getting your hands dirty.
This course is a sequel to LING 045—Phonetics and Phonology. It is designed to provide further training in formal phonology, in terms of both data analysis and the fundamentals of phonological theory. Students will look deeply at both classic and later derivational versions of Optimality Theory, as well as some alternatives to OT, such as Articulatory Phonology. Once a common theoretical foundation has been established we will explore these topics through critical reading of major articles form the linguistic literature, as a way of exploring the details of the theories discussed, their strengths and weaknesses, and the rich cross-linguistic data that underlie them.
There are two textbooks for the course. Both are available in the bookstore and are on reserve in the library.
You'll need to be able to access Moodle (moodle.swarthmore.edu). Some materials we use for the course will be available there (readings, etc.), as will your grades, so make sure you can access it as soon as possible. If you have any trouble with it, notify me as soon as you can. Non-Swarthmore TriCo students may not have access to Moodle immediately at the beginning of the semester—let me know if this is the case for you, and I will make sure you have access to resources in some other way.
The course website (listed above, and linked to from the Moodle course) contains the schedule for the semester and this syllabus. I'll mostly put updates and new materials on Moodle this semester, so will be sure to make announcements about any major changes to the website.
I hold regular office hours (listed above), and can be available at other times by appointment—just send me an e-mail letting me know when you might prefer to meet.
If you are having any trouble with class, such as with understanding a concept or completing an assignment, please don't hesitate to ask me for help. I'm here to help you learn, so I encourage you to take advantage of my availability.
Show up on time and silence cell phones. Food and drinks are generally not allowed in lab, per the policies for the room. However, I don't mind as long as you don't damage the equipment or disturb your classmates. If you need to step out of the class for any reason (bathroom, emergency phone call, etc.), please do so with minimum disruption (i.e., don't ask for permission).
Please use computers only for relevant classroom activities. In other words, please refrain from any sort of non-class-related activities, including messaging (e-mail, social media, etc.), homework for other courses, or even catching up on course reading. Even the best multitaskers are still not participating fully when they're engaging in unrelated endeavours. If it's too difficult to avoid the temptation of these other distractions, you may try strategies like disabling the computer's internet connection, using a filter for web usage, or similar.
Note on pronouns: if you'd like to be referred to by a pronoun that you think I might not guess correctly or if you notice me referring to you by some other pronoun than what you'd prefer, please let me know so that I can get it right.
All material covered during course-related activities—including assigned readings, quizzes, and labs—should be assumed to be required course content, and will be assumed background for later activities. It is each student's responsibility to attend all classes to learn the material covered. If you must miss a class (e.g., for an athletic or religious reason), it is courteous to notify your professor ahead of time if at all possible, but it will be your responsibility to learn about missed material from classmates. It is not my responsibility to make up for your absence or re-teach the material. (That said, let me know if you're having trouble making something up, and we'll figure something out.) With so few class meetings dedicated to each topic and the cumulative nature of the topics, missing one day can be a very big deal—so I really recommend trying not to miss class.
The assigned readings are to be read in advance of the class dates they're assigned for. The readings complement in-class activities and provide the necessary background; however, you should not assume that they will be fully summarized or reviewed in class. Students should be prepared to evaluate, integrate, or respond to the readings in class discussions. Each week it'll be made clear which readings are required and which may be skimmed or are entirely optional.
Any excuse for missing any course-related activities will need to be handled by your class dean. Please see the Medical Excuse Policy (http://www.swarthmore.edu/student-health/medical-excuse-policy), and remember to contact your class dean as soon as you can so that they can work with you.
Assignments will generally be due in physical form (on paper) and typed at the beginning of class on Mondays. Work on the assignment must be complete in order to engage with the day's topic, so it is essential that assignments be submitted on time.
Any assignments submitted late will be evaluated and feedback will be provided, but a grade of 0 will be recorded.
Using words or ideas from another source without attribution constitutes plagiarism, and misrepresenting another student's work as your own (or allowing another student to misrepresent your work as their own) is cheating. Please see the student handbook for the College's policies on academic misconduct (http://www.swarthmore.edu/student-handbook/academic-policies#academic_misconduct). Suspected cases of academic misconduct will be pursued to the full extent of College policy, including referral to the College Judicial Committee.
You are always expected to write up your own assignments. However, you may (and are encouraged to) discuss assignments with one another. Just be sure to cite others' ideas when you use them.
In short, submitting work that is not your own or providing a classmate with a solution will be considered academic misconduct and will be addressed as such (see above-mentioned policies). So please just be honest. And if you have any questions about what's considered acceptable, ask me first.
Most of your assignments will be graded with a fine-grained measure of completion and correctness based on normal letters grades and grade points (A = 4.0, B = 3.0, C = 2.0, D = 1.0, and F = 0.0), with the standard modifiers + (one-third of a grade point higher) and - (one-third of a grade point lower). In addition, intermediate grades using parentheses or a slash may be used, giving the following correspondence between letter grade and grade points:
| A+ | 4.33 |
| A(+) | 4.17 |
| A | 4.00 |
| A(-) | 3.83 |
| A- | 3.67 |
| A/B | 3.50 |
| B+ | 3.33 |
| B(+) | 3.17 |
| B | 3.00 |
| B(-) | 2.83 |
| B- | 2.67 |
| B/C | 2.50 |
| C+ | 2.33 |
| C(+) | 2.17 |
| C | 2.00 |
| C(-) | 1.83 |
| C- | 1.67 |
| C/D | 1.50 |
| D+ | 1.33 |
| D(+) | 1.17 |
| D | 1.00 |
| D(-) | 0.83 |
| D- | 0.67 |
| D/F | 0.50 |
The grade in this course is broken down into the following components. Each component is expounded upon following the table.
| Homework / reading responses: | 30% |
| Engagement: | 10% |
| Article presentations: | 15% |
| Midterm squib: | 15% |
| Final paper prposal: | 5% |
| Final paper presentation: | 10% |
| Final paper: | 15% |
Each week an assignment will be due that may involve solving problems and/or responding to the reading for the week. These are due typed on paper at the beginning of the class they are assigned for. See above for late policy.
I do not grade on attendance, but you will be graded on engagement in the class, and this requires attendance. Beyond simply showing up and participating, you're encouraged to contribute to discussions by asking questions, answering questions, making relevant comments, helping classmates with in-class activities, etc. You will not be ridiculed for asking even simple questions—I want to make sure everyone grasps the concepts, and many are not as straightforward as they may first seem (or as I think they are). You are also expected to have read any assigned readings before class.
Each student is required to lead discussion on two to three readings of their choice throughout the semester. Readings will be chosen the first day from a list of readings by topic. Some students may not get their first choice, but efforts will be made to make sure everyone is happy with the readings they present on.
Presenters should read the pages thoroughly and prepare a handout addressing the author's proposal, arguments given, possible flaws or problems with the analysis, and questions from the presenter and their classmates. Students are encouraged to meet with a SPA prior to their presentation. Presenters are responsible for making sure there are sufficient handouts for the class; if you'd like me to print out copies please email me your handout by 6:30 at the latest.
A short squib outlining an interesting problem in the field will be due around spring break. More information about this will be announced later.
A short (~1 page) proposal of the topic for the final paper will be due about 5 or 6 weeks before the paper is due.
Short presentations (length depending on number of students, but in the 10-15 minute range) of work in progress for the final paper will be presented during the final exam period for the class.
A final paper or project will be due during finals period, [hopefully] after the presentations [depending on timing]. More information will be announced later.
If you believe you need accommodations for a disability or a chronic medical condition, please contact Student Disability Services (Parrish 113W, 123W) via e-mail at studentdisabilityservices@swarthmore.edu to arrange an appointment to discuss your needs. As appropriate, the office will issue students with documented disabilities or medical conditions a formal Accommodations Letter. Since accommodations require early planning and are not retroactive, please contact Student Disability Services as soon as possible. For details about the accommodations process, visit the Student Disability Services website at http://www.swarthmore.edu/academic-advising-support/welcome-to-student-disability-service. You are also welcome to contact me privately to discuss your academic needs. However, all disability-related accommodations must be arranged, in advance, through Student Disability Services.
| week | date | topic | due (by class) | readings | additional materials / readings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 22 Jan | Course outline Working in OT | McCarthy - Doing Optimality Theory (Ch. 1, pp. 41-94) | ||
| 2 | 29 Jan | Working in OT | Pater (1999) - Austronesian Nasal Substitution and other NC effects Bromberger & Halle (1989) - Why Phonology is Different | Reiss (2002) - The OCP and NoBanana | |
| 3 | 05 Feb | Prosodic structure, stress, alignment, metrical phonology | McCarthy & Prince (1993) - Generalized alignment McCarthy & Prince (1994) - The Emergence of the Unmarked Baković (1998) - Unbounded stress and factorial typology Alderete (1999) - Head Dependence in Stress-Epenthesis Interaction | ||
| 4 | 12 Feb | Prosodic structure, stress, alignment, metrical phonology | McCarthy (2003) - OT constraints are categorical Elenbaas & Kager (1999) - Ternary Rhythm and the *Lapse constraint Martínez-Paricio (2012) - Superfeet as recursion | Hyman (2006) - Word-Prosodic Typology Hyman (2007) - Tone: Is it Different? | |
| 5 | 19 Feb | Opacity & Stratal OT | Baković (2011) - Opacity and ordering Kiparsky (2000) - Opacity and Cyclicity | McCarthy (1999) - Sympathy and phonological opacity Steriade (1999) - Paradigm Uniformity and the Phonetics-Phonology Boundary Kiparsky (1985) - Some Consequences of Lexical Phonology | |
| 6 | 26 Feb | Reduplication | McCarthy & Prince (1999) - Faithfulness and identity in prosodic morphology (selections) McCarthy & Prince (1995) - Faithfulness and reduplicative identity Kiparsky (2007) - Reduplication in Stratal OT | Yu (1999) - Dissimilation in Reduplication: The case of emphatic reduplication in Turkish Wedel (1999) - Turkish emphatic reduplication | |
| 7 | 05 Mar | Harmony | Archangeli & Pulleyblank (2002) - Kinande vowel harmony: domains, grounded conditions, and one-sided alignment Harvey & Baker (2005) - Vowel harmony, directionality and morpheme structure constraints in Warlpiri Rose Walker (2004) - A typology of consonant agreement as correspondence Kaun (2004) - The typology of rounding harmony | ||
| 12 Mar | Spring break! | ||||
| 8 | 19 Mar | Sonority | Baertsch & Davis (2003) - The Split Margin Approach to Syllable Structure Davis & Baertsch (2011) - On the relationship between codas and onset clusters Baertsch & Davis (2009) - Strength relations between consonants: a syllable-based OT approach | Clements (1990) - The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification Baertsch & Davis (2008) - Decomposing the Syllable Contact Asymmetry in Korean Gouskova (2004) - Relational hierarchies in Optimality Theory: the case of syllable contact | |
| 9 | 26 Mar | Harmonic Serialism | McCarthy (2016) - The theory and practice of Harmonic Serialism McCarthy (2011) - Autosegmental spreading in Optimality Theory | McCarthy (2010) - An introduction to Harmonic Serialism McCarthy (2009) - Harmony in harmonic serialism | |
| 10 | 02 Apr | Groundedness | Proposal for final paper (05 April) | Anderson (1981) - Why Phonology Isn't "Natural", OR the following:Buckley (2000) - On the Naturalness of Unnatural Rules andHayes (1999) - Phonetically Driven Phonology: The Role of Optimality Theory and Inductive Grounding | Bermúdez-Otero (2005) - Phonological change in Optimality Theory Smolensky (1996) - The initial State and ‘Richness of the Base’ in Optimality TheoryTesar & Smolensky (1996) - Learnability in Optimality Theory |
| 11 | 09 Apr | Optionality and variation | Hayes, Zuraw, Siptár, Londe (2009) - Natural and unnatural constraints in Hungarian vowel harmony AND eitherHammond (2004) - Gradience, Phonotactics, and the Lexicon in English Phonology orAnttila Cho (1998) - Variation and change in Optimality Theory | Hayes & Londe (2005) - Stochastic Phonological Knowledge: The Case of Hungarian Vowel Harmony Becker, Ketrez, Nevins (2008) - The Surfeit of the Stimulus: Analytic biases filter lexical statistics in Turkish devoicing neutralization | |
| 12 | 16 Apr | Articulatory phonology | Browman & Goldstein (1992) - Articulatory Phonology: An Overview Gafos (2002) - A Grammar of Gestural Coordination | Gafos & Benus (2006) - Dynamics of Phonological Cognition Saltzman (1995) - Dynamics and Coordinate Systems in Skilled Sensorimotor Activity Browman & Goldstein (1991) - Gestural Structures: Distinctiveness, Phonological Processes, and Historical Change Parrell (2011) - The role of gestural phrasing in Western Andalusian Spanish aspiration Goldstein (2011) - Back to the past tense in English | |
| 13 | 23 Apr | Two-level phonology | Antworth (1991) – Introduction to Two-Level Phonology Karttunen Beesley (2001) - A Short History of Two-Level Morphology | Koskenniemi (1983) - Two-Level Morphology: A General Computational Model for Word-Form Recognition and Production Koskenniemi (1984) - A general computational model for word-form recognition and production Kiraz (1994) - Multi-tape two-level morphology: A Case Study in Semitic Non-linear Morphology | |
| 14 | 30 Apr | Sub-regular phonology | Heinz (2009) - On the role of locality in learning stress patterns Heinz (2010) - Learning Long-Distance Phonotactics File | Jardine (2015) - Computationally, tone is different | |
| 14 May | |||||
| 17 May |