Course Description
This course will examine variation in both phonetics/phonology and syntax/semantics and discuss models proposed to account for it. We are using the term “variation” for two related things: variation across varieties (dialects) of a language, and variation across realizations of a linguistic structure in a single variety. Our main focus will be on grammatical factors in variation rather than social ones, but the question of how these relate will also be addressed. Properties of variation in areas such as tense, agreement and left periphery, and consonant and vowel allophony and alternations will be explored. We will discuss parametric models of variation in syntax, and constraint based models in phonology, and the relationship between them and to variable rules models from sociolinguistics.
Area Tags: Variation, Dialects, Syntax, Semantics, Phonology, Sociolinguistics
(Session 2) Monday/Thursday 9:00am – 10:20 am
Location: ILC S231
Instructors: Lisa Green & Joe Pater
Lisa Green is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research and teaching interests include syntax, syntactic variation, child language acquisition and development of African American English, and linguistics and education. She is the author of African American English: A Linguistic Introduction and Language and the African American Child (Cambridge University Press) and journal articles and book chapters on syntax and semantics of African American English.
Joe Pater is Professor of Linguistics at UMass Amherst. He specializes in phonology, with interests in language acquisition, computational linguistics and experimental linguistics. His recent work includes papers in Phonology, Language, Glossa and Cognitive Science.
