Intensive investigation of synchronic and diachronic variation in German. Taught in English.

This course provides an overview of the extra-linguistic factors that either promote the maintenance of a minority/heritage language, or effect the shift towards the majority or hegemonic regional or national variety. Specific emphasis is placed on the methods and data sources for conducting qualitative and quantitative sociolinguistic analysis.

From a theoretical perspective, the course focuses on Verticalization – a model based in community theory – and will use Josh Brown’s edited volume as a primary text. Primary data concerns contact varieties of Finnish, Norwegian, West Frisian, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Eastern Band Cherokee. Discussion will center around the model’s application in the American context, and applications of the model beyond an English-majority setting. Additional case studies examine Somali, Swedish, and Low German in North America; and on Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Hunsrück and Bernese Swiss German in South America, in majority Spanish and Portuguese contexts.

Additionally, papers students write for the course could be turned into an abstract submission at the beginning of the summer for WILA 15 (Workshop on Immigrant Languages), which will be hosted by UGA in Fall of 2024.

Intensive investigation of a subject or topic in German linguistics. Taught in English.

Phonology and grammar of the language, with extensive readings in the prose, epic, and lyric poetry of the Middle High German era.

Morphology, phonology, and history of the Gothic language based on extant texts. Emphasis on the development of earlier stages of the language and on its later language forms. Taught in English.

The original course materials dealing with such topics as formal and ordinary languages, meaning, reference, descriptions, truth, definition, analyticity, speech acts, and the uses of language.

Special topics and current issues in second language acquisition. Topics will vary; consult the Linguistics Program office for the specific topics to be covered in any offering of the seminar.

Special topics in phonetics, phonology, or the phonetics/phonology interface. The course will be taught in English, and will focus on significant contributions to phonetics & theoretical phonology (potentially including historical and L2 scenarios) that draw on data from a variety of Romance languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, and Catalan.

Special topics in syntax, semantics, or the syntax/semantics interface.

Formal analysis of syntactic phenomena, such as question formation, relative clauses, and topicalization (known as A'-dependencies), as well as the distribution of reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns with respect to their antecedents (known as binding or anaphoric relations). Examples are drawn primarily from English.

Techniques and formalisms for analyzing syntactic phenomena of human languages within the framework of generative grammar. Examples will be drawn from English.