Introduction to Linguistics and Research Designs

Description:
This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the scientific study of language, focusing on key areas of linguistics, such as phonetics, syntax, and semantics. Students will explore different research designs, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods, with practical examples to help them apply these approaches in linguistic research. From corpus analysis to experimental studies, the course equips learners with essential tools to investigate language structure, use, and acquisition, while staying informed about current trends in the field.




Course Structure:
Lesson 1: Overview of Linguistics as a Scientific Study

Content: Introduction to the core areas of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Practical Example: Analyzing how a simple sentence is broken down into its linguistic components.

Lesson 2: Descriptive vs. Theoretical Linguistics

Content: Differentiating between descriptive linguistics (what language is) and theoretical linguistics (how language works).
Practical Example: Comparing phonetic transcriptions from different languages and theoretical models explaining language acquisition.

Lesson 3: Quantitative Research in Linguistics

Content: Introduction to quantitative methods, surveys, corpus analysis, and statistical tools used in linguistic studies.
Practical Example: Corpus-based analysis of word frequency in spoken vs. written texts, followed by basic statistical interpretation.

Lesson 4: Qualitative Research in Linguistics

Content: Focus on ethnography, discourse analysis, and interviews as qualitative research methods.
Practical Example: Performing a discourse analysis of a conversation and identifying linguistic patterns.

Lesson 5: Mixed Methods Research Design

Content: Integrating both qualitative and quantitative approaches in a single study.
Practical Example: A case study combining survey data (quantitative) and focus group interviews (qualitative).

Lesson 6: Experimental Designs in Linguistics

Content: Designing and conducting experiments in psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and neurolinguistics.
Practical Example: A simple psycholinguistic experiment to measure reaction times to syntactic ambiguity.

Lesson 7: Longitudinal Studies in Linguistics

Content: Understanding how language change and acquisition can be studied over time.
Practical Example: Designing a study to track language acquisition in bilingual children over several years.

Lesson 8: Comparative Linguistics and Typological Research

Content: Investigating similarities and differences among languages from a cross-linguistic perspective.
Practical Example: Comparing the syntactic structure of subject-verb-object (SVO) and subject-object-verb (SOV) languages.

Lesson 9: Corpus Linguistics and Data-driven Research

Content: Using linguistic corpora for large-scale, data-driven research.
Practical Example: Conducting a collocation analysis of high-frequency verbs in English and another language.

Lesson 10: Current Trends in Linguistics Research

Content: Exploring contemporary research topics such as computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language documentation.
Practical Example: Analyzing how AI models like ChatGPT handle syntactic and semantic ambiguity in language processing.

This course provides a balance between foundational linguistic theory and various research methods with practical examples that engage learners.

• Start Date: 2024-09-24
• End Date: 2025-09-24
• Fee: Free