As a teacher, I am committed to a 2-level pedagogical approach: On the one hand to the training of the next generation of linguistic researchers, on the other to the fostering of a general public both linguistically educated and aware. Students interested in pursuing scholarly careers in linguistics need tools, and I intend to provide these through thorough instruction in theoretical issues and approaches and in what is known about the detailed mechanics of language use and change, coupled with large amounts of practical experience in the examination and analysis of data and the critical evaluation of alternative methodological approaches. But far more importantly, I believe that undergraduate students pursuing liberal-arts degrees, among whom are likely to be found a large percentage of tomorrow's political and community leaders and electorate (with a certain amount of control over future academic and research budgets), require some understanding of and appreciation for the great linguistic diversity and monumental language-using and -processing power our species is capable of, and that therefore it behooves us to supply them with an education that opens up their minds to this fascinating field. If anything, for these reasons the education of undergraduates is to me of greater moment than that of graduate students, besides being a particularly attractive endeavour to me personally. A major pedagogical goal of mine, in which I have so far enjoyed some success, has long been to relate the specific facts, theories, and concerns of my own field to the broader range of human intellectual endeavour and curiosity, making clear how linguistics, the study of the phenomenon of human language per se, can both augment and clarify general human cultural and scientific perspectives.
As noted elsewhere, intellectual flexibility and an openness to convincing arguments and the implications of counterevidence is of very great importance to me. I have striven for most of my adult life to cultivate such flexibility in myself, and i intend to cultivate it in my students as well. My ultimate professional goal is to cultivate in myself and in others, particularly my students, an enthusiastically sceptical attitude that, fascinated with the diversity of human linguistic phenomena, actively seeks out data with which to challenge any given theoretical claim.
Teaching assistantships in the UIUC Linguistics Department are few and far between, and although i strove passionately to get one i was unsuccessful. I did manage occasionally to get invitations to substitute for regular instructors who had to be out of town, and in most cases these situations worked out well (there were one or two occasions in which i was insufficiently prepared for what the students could deal with). Denied a regular outlet for my urge to teach, i poured a certain amount of energy during my years in the graduate program in linguistics into planning courses i would like to teach someday and drafting lectures for that purpose.
My one formal teaching opportunity in linguistics came at the beginning of 1994, when i was invited to take a 5-month position as Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Theoretical Linguistics at Eövös Loránd University in Budapest. This position was offered to me in full knowledge that one of my principal areas of interest and expertise was historical linguistics -- not a field one usually thinks of when one thinks of `theoretical linguistics' -- and in fact of the various courses i offered to teach the only one that sparked enough interest in the students for any to sign up for it was an introductory course in comparative and historical linguistics (which i did my best to relate to various theoretical concerns, both out of some sense of loyalty to the department that was giving me this opportunity and out of my own personal interest and preferred approach to the subject). This course went very well -- witness the summary of the students' evaluations below -- and i loved every minute i spent on it.
By the beginning of September i had started working up a series of short lectures giving an overview of the current state of Chomskyan theory, and was getting ready to start circulating these to the interested parties, when one of them (not the original poster) suggested that i advertise the availability of this service on the bulletin board; there might be a few other people out there who might be interested. So i did. Within a week i had received pleas to be included from well over 100 people; by the end of September, it was about 180. Currently, we're running close to 250. In addition, i know there are a lot of people getting this stuff that i don't know about. For one thing, many of the `official' subscribers are printing out my `lecturettes' and circulating them among their friends; some of them are (with my permission) making use of my materials in classes they themselves are teaching. For another, one of my `students' has managed to put the series on WWW. So i don't know how many people are actually benefitting from this. What matters to me more than anything else is that they really are benefitting from it. At the moment, this is the only teaching i'm able to do.
At any rate, the venture is called `SYNTHINAR'. So far, it consists of nearly two dozen `lecturettes' (each roughly equivalent to 3-4 pages of typescript). I've recently finished my survey of Chomskyan theory and have begun discussing Relational Grammar; i hope to be able eventually to cover many if not all of the various frameworks of syntactic theory i'm acquainted with. In addition to the lecturettes, I field questions from my `students' and do my best to answer them; some of these I decide are worth broadcasting (after a bit of editing, in part to maintain anonymity) to everybody for the purpose of general discussion. At least at this point, it's not the free-wheeling seminar-style give-and-take i'd like to be in charge of, but it does seem to be filling a need.
During the second term of the academic year 1993/94, Steven Schaufele taught an introductory Historical Linguistics course under the auspices of our department [the Theoretical Linguistics Program, ELTE, Budapest]. According to the students' evaluation, he has excellent teaching skills, his classes were well-prepared and enjoyable. The students profited considerably from both his classes and his exams.
I just want to say THANK YOU (!) for offering the Syntax Seminar. I think it is very generous of you to share them with us. I feel that I have learned more about syntax from you than from the university courses I have taken! I have come to look forward to receiving and reading your postings.
I was shocked to read that you're not in a linguistics job somewhere. I've really enjoyed your lecturettes, and think that a lot of students are missing out on very good lectures. All the best, and thanks for all the work you've put in so far.
Thank you very much! That all makes a lot of sense, and I'm now feeling a little dumb for having asked -- I should have figured most of that out on my own. Anyway, thanks for the very clear explanation.
I've found the lectures extremely useful. You are much better at explaining things than the authors of some of the books that I have read and your perspective is different than what I have been getting in class. I'll be pleased to receive whatever lectures you have time to turn out of whatever schedule suits you. Thanks again.
In the past, I only gave my full praise to the book written by Andrew Radford, and also only chose it as the textbook, though I came across many different introductory books on syntax. However, now I have to say your presentation of the theory is even better than his.
I had a look at your lecturettes 1-21 today and took the liberty of copying them, so that I could read them in the confort of my apartment. They seem to be very well done, easy to read and with a personal tone that makes them less cold than this type of material may have.
I'm enjoying the lecturettes -- they're clear, well-written and make for good aids in course prep. Hope you are getting something out of the process -- we are, in the audience.
I'm really sorry that the real world is interfering with the more important things in life. I, too, hope you get an academic job, because I feel like the linguistics community needs you a lot more than the world of typesetting does. I base my opinion not only on your (extremely valuable) lecturettes for SYNTHINAR, but on your timely, entertaining and interesting contributions to the Linguist List. Let me just say that I will welcome your communiques whenever and however you can deliver them.
I just wanted to say that I am endlessly grateful for your seminars at any pace. I ... cannot tell you how much I appreciate your willingness to provide us with all this.
Please accept my deepest gratitude to your kindness of sending me all these interesting lecturettes. They provide me a lot of knowledge that help me to understand TG much better. I hope that you may continue to look into other topics as well.
Hi, I just wanted to let you know that most of the SYNTHINAR participants are simply happy to receive your lecturettes WHENEVER you can send them. You are providing a wonderful service (and doing it for free might I add)
Gee whiz! Maybe I missed something, but I did not think that we the recipients of your lecturette series were paying you anything for our subscriptions. That being the case, I do not think people ought to bug you about the pace of production. I just wish this had been available to me in l993-4 when I was struggling with Chomsky in syntax classes! Thanks for what you are doing.
Thanks for the admirable job you have done for all of us. I sincerely hope that you will soon land an academic job somewhere.
I have been a member of your syntax e-mail lectures and have learnt a lot from the lecturettes you posted us.... I admire your dedication to this work and appreciate very much all your efforts. My hearty thanks!
The course begins with the general question, What are the linguistic phenomena that syntactic research seeks to account for? The goal will be a consensus about the definition of sets of linguistic phenomena that are or are not syntactic in nature, while acknowledging that in some cases it may be difficult, impossible, or even undesirable to draw a clear line between syntax and other modules of linguistic behaviour such as morphology or semantics. From there we will talk about the early development of the generative approach to syntactic theory, culminating in the model enshrined in Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.
Taking the Aspects model as its springboard, the second half of the course will discuss developments of the late 60's and early 70's, including Ross Constraints and the consequent constraint-based orientation of more modern syntactic theory, the rise and fall of Generative Semantics and the theoretical repercussions thereof, the development of X-Bar Theory, and Emonds' Structure-Preservation Constraint. While all of these are particularly relevant for the history of Chomskyan `Standard' Theory, they are also in varying degrees relevant to a wide range of other frameworks and therefore need to be included in an introductory course in general syntactic theory. The course will close with a brief `preview' of more recent developments in syntactic theory, including the diversity of perspectives that blossomed in the late 70's and 80's and that continues to fuel a lot of contemporary research in syntactic theory.
Grades will be based on a series of problem-solving exercises assigned from time to time throughout the course with a view to promoting facility with syntactic analytical techniques and on a final exam, combining some further problem-solving with discussion of major theoretical and methodological issues raised during the course.
This course is a complementary and critical study of a variety of frameworks of syntactic theory, both `formal' (GPSG, PPA, RG-APG) and `functional' (Cognitive Grammar, Montague Grammar, RRG, Word Grammar) and some that show both characteristics (e.g., HPSG, LFG).
It is COMPLEMENTARY in that we will be addressing questions such as:
At least an introductory-level course in syntactic theory is a prerequisite. Classtime will not be given over to presenting complete reviews of each of the frameworks under discussion; instead, the first semester of the course will be spent in discussing each framework from the point of view of the above questions and the issues relevant thereto. I am assuming that my students will have had at least some exposure to the `Chomskyan' school, known variously as `Government & Binding' (GB), `Revised Extended Standard Theory' (REST), `Principles & Parameters Approach' (PPA or P&P), and `Minimality Theory', and for this reason I expect that preliminary discussion of this framework will be brief, focussing on those aspects of it which will be of the greatest relevance for the comparative discussion later. I am not assuming any such familiarity with any of the other frameworks under discussion, and will expect to go into greater depth in presenting the assumptions, designs, and methodologies of these. These expectations of mine are, of course, subject to amendment upon consultation with the department and the students.
During the exam period at the end of the first semester, the students may be given a `review exam', providing them with an opportunity to recapitulate and summarize those aspects of each of the frameworks discussed which seem most relevant to the basic questions behind the seminar. The exact nature of this exam, what weight it will have in grading, and even whether it takes place at all, are issues I will take under advisement and decide on the basis of what I judge to be in the best interests of the students with regard to the goals of the course.
The final grade will depend primarily upon an individual research project culminating in a term paper. During the Christmas vacation period students will be expected to consider and sketch out their projects; they will be encouraged to discuss these with the instructor at this time via telephone, e-mail, or any other appropriate means of communication. Early in the second semester they will in any case be required to consult with the instructor in order to define a research project relevant to the course content. During the first half of the semester class time will be taken up primarily with general discussion of the various frameworks surveyed in the first semester with a view to comparing their various methodological assumptions and the types of analytic problems for which they are particularly well (or badly) suited. Outside of class, students will be expected to be pursuing their research projects and writing them up; classtime during the second half of the semester will be taken up by presentations by the students on their projects and by discussion of the comparative-theoretical issues raised. The quality and content of the presentations, and of the classroom discussion throughout the year, will be the major determinant of course grades.
Students will be offered examples of the range of linguistic diversity of the human species, demonstrating that phenomena which speakers of typical Western European languages may take for granted may not in fact be quite as `normal' as we tend to assume. They will be encouraged to wrestle with such questions as:
The course will be divided roughly in half between a focus on linguistics as a psychological and anthropological science and as a sociological science; of course, the anthropological aspects of linguistics necessarily shade into the sociological aspects, and the course will be organized to reflect this.
In this course we will survey some of the more significant and interesting controversies in the history of historical and comparative linguistics and linguistic reconstruction. Some of these controversies (e.g., the Laryngeal Hypothesis in Indo-European studies) will be purely historical in the sense that, while at one time they aroused significant debate within the field, they have long since been resolved, at least in their broad outlines, to virtually everyone's satisfaction. Others (e.g., the Altaic Hypothesis, the Nostratic Hypothesis) are of recent or current relevance.
At the beginning of the semester the instructor will distribute a list of hypotheses in the field of comparative, historical, and reconstructive linguistics that have aroused an appreciable amount of controversy. During the first half of the semester, the instructor will present materials and lead discussion on a selection of these. During this period, students will be encouraged to consider individually which of the hypotheses on the list they would like to focus their attention on for the rest of the semester. Around midterm time at the latest, each student will meet with the instructor to discuss their choices, at which time the instructor will present each student with the basis of a suitable reading list. The second half of the semester will be taken up with student presentations on various controversial hypotheses. Each student will be expected to write a term paper consisting of a critical summary and evaluation of the arguments presented in the literature for and against a particular controversial hypothesis. Grades will be based on the term papers and on classroom participation, especially the presentations.
Sir William Jones, the Brothers Grimm, etc. Also, how come comparative IE linguistics didn't really get off the ground before late 18th century?
(no more than 2 weeks on these two introduction sections)
(spend a fair amount of time on this)
This last section is really meant to be a sort of bridge into the next and last member of the 3-course sequence: We've looked at the prehistoric background that all IE languages have in common, what can we say about how the PIE-speaking community broke up, leading to the multitude of attested branches of the family?
The course is conceived as taking a full academic year in two semesters. Each semester will culminate in an exam covering all the material in that semester.
First Semester -- The Incubation of Modern English
Quick gander at PIE; PIE to PGmc; Grimm's Law, etc. (at most one lecture)
(explain `Low')
History of Dialectal Amalgam in Britain
The general and the regional influence of Norse on English
Historical overview of the development of Modern English through the
Tudor and Stuart periods up to the present, with special attention to the
consequences for the English language of the growth of the British Empire
and its consequent spread around the globe and rise to the status of the
Whole World's Second Language. Compare spread of English from Great
Britain into the rest of the world with the (secondary) spread of English
from the United States, Australia, etc. into the rest of the world.
detailed looks at the development of English in each of the major
countries and regions (Australia/New Zealand, South Asia, North America,
and the Anglophone regions of Africa, East Asia, and the Middle East)
that have been at one time or another part of the Empire.
close on 20th-century developments in the language's home in Great
Britain (and possibly `second home' in North America); pay particular
attention to dialectology.
Linguists have traditionally talked about word structure in terms of
morphemes, pre-theoretically parallel to the phonologists' phonemes. But
what, exactly, are morphemes? Are they linguistic strings that are
assembled together according to certain 'rules' or processes? Or are
they rather the processes themselves? We will be examining the spectrum
of views on these questions that have been developed and argued for by
various linguists (including the view that the whole concept of morphemes
is much overrated) and discussing the often paradoxical ways in which
morphological structure interacts with syntactic and phonological
structure. Obviously, a typical linguistic utterance must be
simultaneously describable and analyzable in phonological, morphological,
and syntactic terms, but it is often found that theoretical accounts of
morphological structure that make sense from a phonological point of view
make no sense at all from the point of view of syntax and vice versa. We
will delve into all of this.
Designed to make students aware of the variety of morphological phenomena
in the languages of the world and the (often necessarily mutually
inconsistent) theoretical perspectives developed by various linguists
attempting to make sense of them, this course consists of ten 2-hour
lectures presenting an overview of various classes of problems and
approaches. The lectures will survey the material in the principal and
other major texts supplemented by a large number of books and articles
important in the recent (i.e., the past 40 years) history of
morphological theory. The students will be held responsible for the
former, but all of the supplementary readings will be made available to
them to read as well and their further reading therein will be
encouraged. The grade will be based on weekly problem sets drawn from
the principal and other major texts and on a final exam that combines
further problems with essay questions testing students' understanding
of the major themes of the course.
In most cases, what options exist are typically ranked according to
preference, within the general speech community, within the usage of a
particular individual, or within a particular register of language use.
Most of us accept the first category without thinking about it much. As
far as the second is concerned, we may simply accept that other people
within our speech community don't have to talk exactly like us, and may
have different grammatical preferences. As for the third, we tend to
concentrate on those registers which we need to use in our personal and
career lives, make sure we understand what usages are appropriate to
each of these, and ignore the others as much as possible.
Literary authors writing dramatic or narrative fiction, however, by the
nature of their work are often called upon to represent a wider variety
of grammatical options than a typical individual language user would
normally use. In many cases a writer, such as Dickens, will use a
variety of dialectal idiosyncracies in order to define the regional or
class background of his or her characters; such exploitation is
particularly characteristic of mystery fiction, in which such issues as
regional, class, or occupational background can be of great
significance. Or a writer, such as Shakespeare, may exploit grammatical
options within a single dialect for the purpose of characterization by
defining a range of variability and assigning to each of his characters a
point along that range, so that each character's usage is completely
consistent internally (at least with regard to the appropriate variables)
but differs subtlely from that of all the other characters.
In the first half of this course we will discuss what sorts of options
exist in English and, to some extent, in some other major literary
languages, and the pragmatics of these options, i.e., what we are likely
to infer about a given speaker or situation from the choice by that
speaker or in that situation of one option over another. During the
second half of the semester, we will look at some examples of the
exploitation of such options by certain literary authors or schools of
authors for professional purposes; this segment of the course, it is
hoped, will include student presentations. Evaluation will be based
primarily on a term paper, in which each student will investigate in
explanatory and critical detail the exploitation by a particular author
or closely related group of authors of one particular type of grammatical
option. It is expected that most of the authors discussed will be
representative of the English language; however, any major literary
language may be included, provided only that the student writing the
study is confident of his or her command of that language.
This course will be of interest to linguists interested in corpus-based
research, especially of literary corpora, to literary critics, and to
students of creative writing interested in increasing their awareness of
the tools of literary writing.
The course will focus on what we know and are able to find out about
these questions and the various subordinate questions summed up in them,
what each of the disciplines that make up the interdisciplinary field of
Cognitive Science has to say about them, and how the methodologies of
these disciplines compare with each other.
The operative word in the above questions is `human'; evidence suggests
that human knowledge differs in certain respects from other logically
possible types, and we will be discussing the extent to which this is so
and some hypotheses as to why it is so.
The course is organized as follows:
Introduction to Morphological Theory
Morphology is the study of form; linguistic morphology is primarily the
study of the forms of words. But what, precisely, is a word? In some
languages of North America, that which is recognizably a single word from
a phonological point of view can have the communicative content of a
complete clause, with explicit arguments etc. Is it a word or a
sentence? In what terms should its structure be analyzed?
Seminar: the Exploitation of Optionality by Literary
Authors
All languages allow a certain amount of optional variability in their
grammars. Some languages, e.g. the early Indo-European languages such as
Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, allow a great deal of freedom of word order.
Even languages like English in which word order is much more heavily
constrained allow a range of options for, e.g., the placement of
adverbials. And there are other sorts of options, e.g., the choice
between active and passive voice.Introduction to Cognitive Science: a Survey
Course
This course is organized around the kinds of questions that people ask
about human cognition and cognitive processes:
The first question is assumed to be best addressed through the other
four; the parallels between these and computer metaphors (input/output,
storage, processing) is evident and will be discussed during the course.
Each of the four major sections is assumed to take 3-4 weeks.