Linguistics Competencies

Intro to Language Study (ENGL 220)

Introduction to Linguistic Analysis (English 221)

Students who successfully complete the course will be able to:

• Effectively find and evaluate materials in the field by
  • Using academic databases such as Library Search and Google Scholar to discover and evaluate quality secondary research materials.
  • Comparing and evaluating scholarly vs. popular press articles in linguistics field, further evaluating the authors and the periodicals themselves.
• Pose thoughtful, researchable questions on linguistic topics.
• Differentiate between, find, use, and do primary, secondary, and tertiary research in linguistics areas. (See Research.)

English Syntax (English 321, formerly Transformational Grammar)

Students will be able to

• analyze the syntactic structure of English sentences;
• compare various theoretical approaches to syntax, such as traditional, structural, and especially generative grammatical theory, with an understanding of their historical relationships and how they build on each other;
• explain key developments in the history of grammatical analysis;
• apply theoretical principles to specific syntactic structures;
• understand the principles and terminology of this field of study; and
• critically examine questions of linguistic authority, usage, and correctness.

History of English (English 322)

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

• explain the origin and development of the English alphabetic system of writing;

• identify the major processes of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic change and provide examples of each;

• identify and explain the major types of linguistic borrowing and provide examples of each;

• explain the concept of language family and provide examples of language families, including the Indo-European and Germanic; and

• identify and describe major characteristics of the stages in the development of Modern English, including Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic, Old English, and Middle English.

Old English Language and Literature (ENGL 401)

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

• explain the place of English in the Germanic and Indo-European language families

• identify key historical events in the Anglo-Saxon Period and the time immediately prior to it

• identify and explain central cultural beliefs and practices of the Germanic world

• acquire a dictionary-reading knowledge of Old English

• identify and discuss some of the important prose and poetic works written in Old English

• perform literary analyses of selected Old English prose and poetry largely in translation but also in the original language.

Dialects of American English (English 462/H/662)

Students will be able to:

• identify the primary features (phonological, grammatical, lexical, and pragmatic) of the major regional and social dialects of American English.
• discuss historical and social factors which gave rise to these dialects.
• explain and engage in methodologies employed by linguists in the identification of these dialects.
• point to primary resources available in the study of American regional and social dialects.

Applied Linguistics (ENGL 463/663)

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

• identify the key goals and assumptions underlying traditional, structural and generative grammatical theories;

• explain and apply insights into the phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic structure of English provided by these theories; and

• further apply the latter to key issues in teaching grammar to both standard and non-standard speakers, in teaching second languages, in teaching writing, in teaching reading, and in analyzing literature.