Language Analysis Workshop

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 19:00:00 -0500

A recurring challenge in our program has been the varied levels of student expertise and engagement with the details of language diversity. Previous attempts to address this gap were of limited success, but this year we tried a new approach: during our yearly Winter Storm intensive workshop we organized a Language Analysis Workshop. Students worked in interdisciplinary teams to uncover the properties of a language that they had never encountered previously, Zazaki Kurdish. 35 participants worked in 4 groups, each focused on a particular linguistic domain: e.g., phonology, pronouns. They met with a native speaker informant to elicit data, and used additional time to collaborate on planning the elicitation sessions and documenting their results. Participants were also encouraged to consider the possible contributions of different sub-disciplines to language analysis of this type. Reviews suggested that the workshop was well received and it will be repeated in the future.