Florian Schwarz
Teaching Assistant

Discussion Sections D02 & D05 for Linguistics 101 'People and their Language' (Prof. John McCarthy)

Office Hours: Wednesday & Friday 10 - 11, South College 314

course website: http://courses.umass.edu/ling101s/

course pack: http://courses.umass.edu/ling101s/coursepack.pdf

May 18th

- Here's the handout for the review session: Review Session

- I have emailed an overview of your grades, your attendance, extra credit, and your predicted final grade - so check your email if you\ want to know about these things!

May 12th

- Here's Friday's handout: May 12th

- Final attendance data for the discussion section can be found here.

- The optional review session for the final will take place on Thursday, May 18th, in Dickinson 112, 113, or 114 (just check which room I'm in).

May 7th

- Here's Friday's handout: May 5th

- Make sure to download and print the LAST homework assignment if you missed class (available at http://courses.umass.edu/ling101s/hw5.pdf )

April 22th

- Here's yesterday's handout: April 21st

April 20th

- Sorry that I've gotten a little behind with posting handouts. Here are the the last two:

    - from April 7th

    - from April 14th

- If you can't make it to discussion on Friday, make sure that you get the following two handouts from the class website:

    - Homework Assignment # 4

    - Term Paper Option Handout  

- I emailed you a file with information about your grades. Please let me know if you have any questions about this!

April 3rd

- Here's the handout from last Friday's class.

- I've put up an overview of discussion section attendance, so you can now check whether you need to worry about missing too many sections (see the general lecture website for information on lecture attendance). 

March 10th

- Here's the handout from today's class, with some information on the next homework. If you were not in class, you also need to be sure to get 

    - the dialect survey.

    - homework assignment #3

    - the reading for the homework (Eckert 1988)

    - the reading for Monday (Shuy)

Come talk to me or email me if you have any questions about the homework or the dialect survey!

March 3rd

- Here's the handout from today's class, with some information on the test and the kinds of questions that will be on the test.

February 24th

- Here's the handout from today's class.

- There's a good Wikipedia entry on 'Clever Hans' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

- You can read the original article about the dog Rico that appeared in Science (6/11/2004, Vol. 304 Issue 5677, p1682-1683) through the online access of the UMass library here. There also was a story on this on NPR's 'All things considered', which you can find at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1952976.

February 23rd

- Please bring your data to class tomorrow, preferably with the averages from the excel file!

- An update on the 'What did you always want to know about language?' question: Three of the most popular questions that I found in the questionnaire I gave to you in the beginning were:

    - Where does language come from? How did it all start? and

    - How do languages change?

    - How do languages differ from one another?

So you should be excited about the reading assignments from this week! Chapters 2 and 11 in Pinker's textbook discuss these issues in quite some detail. The last question was also discussed by John in class. 

Unfortunately, the answer to the first question is not very definite - we simply don't know enough to have a very clear idea about how the language instinct evolved. But it's good to know why many of the myths about this that are out there are wrong, and Pinker explains that very clearly.

A lot can be said about language change, but one crucial factor is the way that children acquire language. Very much like in the case of Nicaraguan Sign Language and the deaf boy Simon, who acquired ASL from his parents (who themselves were not fluent in ASL), children 'recreate' the grammar of the language they are learning, and that is one important place where small changes can occur from generation to generation.

February 17th

- I put up some more detailed instructions for using the Excel file for the homework assignment here.

- Handout from today's discussion section pdf

February 12th

1) As promised in class, I will try to answer at least some of the questions that you wrote in the questionnaire under  'What did you always want to know about language?'

This week, I'll start out by pointing you to an excellent website where you can ask any question you want about language and linguistics:

Ask a Linguist (part of www.linguistlist.org) 

2) Someone in class mentioned the modern myth that Eskimos have many many words for snow. The linguist Geoffrey Pullum has written a great article about this, and you can find some short excerpts from it here. 

February 10th

- Handout from today's discussion section pdf

- Two links about Nicaraguan sign language (with more links to follow up on):

February 3rd

- I handed out a little questionnaire in our first meeting. If you weren't there, please fill it out electronically!

- Handout (pdf): Course Logistics, Homework #1, Writing an Essay, etc.