Irathient is my favorite language. If you didn’t like it DON’T SAY ANYTHING! My feelings will be hurt and I will cry. Focus up on MA8, because next week we start on orthography! ~:D

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

• Class Slides
• Trisha’s Presentation
• Juan’s Presentation

Links

• Irathient Memrise Course? (lol there’s nothing online about the Defiance languages. The fans didn’t care enough)
• Course Evaluations

Assignments

Reading

• AoLI Chapter 4, pp. 209-228

Practice

• Go to Omniglot and find an orthography that does not use the Roman alphabet and post a link to our #orthography channel. Tell us what interests you about it!

Mastery

• MA 8: Remember to do this assignment making reference to everything you created—in particular MA 4 and MA 6!

Backburner

• Next week we’re going to be creating writing systems, so it will be a great week to start thinking about and preparing your final project! Go through the elements of the final and see what it is that needs to be done, and then start writing it up. Figure out what questions you have, and what you still want to work on!
• Keep thinking about and working on your final project.

Today we looked at pragmatics in all its glory. (Also negation and other stuff.)

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

• Class Slides

Links

• Matt Pearson’s Okuna

Assignments

Reading

• AoLI Chapter 2, pp. 153-158

Practice

• Tough day. Post a picture of some manner of animal (hopefully the adorable kind) to our #general channel!

Mastery

• MA7 on word order, valency, relative clauses, and questions (a bit).

Backburner

• Still looking at MA8.
• Keep looking at your final assignment.

Today we discussed questions and relative clauses and some other stuff. I assigned a landmark paper by Grice today, and I know it’s a little long, but trust me, you’re going to want to read this eventually in your linguistics career and/or life. It’s foundational. Easily ten times more important than Chomsky’s entire œuvre, and I mean that seriously.

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

• Class Slides

Links

• WALS Map (Polar Question Strategies)
• WALS Map (Position of Polar Question Particles)

Assignments

Reading

• H. P. Grice “Logic and Conversation” [PDF]

Practice

• Today you got some new borrowed words! I want you to take them back, apply your sound changes to them (based on when you got the word), and post in #lexicon what they now mean in your language (plus where or who you got them from).

Mastery

• (None Today)

Backburner

• MA7 on word order, valency, relative clauses, and questions (a bit).
• Still looking at MA8.
• Keep looking at your final assignment.

Today we started our journey into syntax with valency. You want to see some applicatives? Check out that paper by Elena Mihas. Wow! Tomorrow a reporter from a German radio station will be in our class. If you’d like to not be in class because of that, please let me know ahead of time, and we’ll figure out an alternative.

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

• Class Slides
• Elena Mihas “Grammaticalization of the Generalized Kampan Applicative -ako”

Links

• Something I wrote about Tagalog
• An example of an applicative plus a passive in a relative clause

• WALS Chapter on Relative Clauses
• WALS Chapter on Interrogative Phrases

Practice

• By class time tomorrow, I want you to have a list of at least 10 potentially tradable nouns that are unique to your culture, and then I want you to bring them to class. (You don’t necessarily need to have a physical paper—the list can be virtual—but it might help if you have a physical paper.) Here are some examples of what I mean by tradable nouns:
  • Plants
  • Trees (when they’re small you can put them in a pot!)
  • Precious gems
  • Different types of stone/building material
  • Fish
  • Domesticated mammals
  • Birds (maybe “trade” is a poor word, but those dudes can fly!)
  • Textiles/clothes
  • Food items
  • Fruit
  • Flowers
  • Jewelry/ornaments
  • Weapons
  • Types of vessels
  • Trinkets
  • Other (as long as fits the general description I gave)

  You can post these to the #lexicon channel if you want, but the most important thing is that you bring your words to class (and also be in class if you possibly can). If you know you can’t be in class, then please do post them to #lexicon.

Mastery

• (None Today)

Backburner

• Here’s MA7 early.
• Here’s MA8, on your morphosyntax.
• I would also like to reveal to you your final assignment. Take a look and see what you think.