Assignment

0. Create a workspace for yourself, fill in the table about yourself under the link "Participants".

1. How many languages are there?

2. What is there in http://wals.info ?

3. NL: What is the theoretical framework behind the database called SAND?

4. Choose a language you know well and add it to the last cell of the table under the link "Participants".

Sept.

23

1.a. What is World Atlas of Linguistic Structures, which you can find under http://wals.info ?

1.b. Everybody:

• Which Uralic languages are included in the database?
• NL: Which Dutch dialects are included as separate "languages" in the database?

1.c. Find the link to Hungarian/Dutch in WALS.

• Add the link to to your personal page in the workspace.

2.a. Read the material under Cl. 2 and the yellow parts of Cl. 1.

• Find the corresponding Wikipedia and other links in Dutch/Hungarian about these topics
• copy the material on your page,
• and read it -- I might check your knowledge in the next class.
• always copy the source page, or the reference to the book if applicable.

2.b. On the basis of what you have read and the description of the databases, try to answer the following questions:

• What is the theoretical framework or type of linguistics that is used in compiling World Atlas of Linguistic Structures? (It belongs to the frameworks listed under Cl. 2).
• NL: What is the theoretical framework behind the database called SAND? (It is belongs to the frameworks listed under Cl. 2).

3. Video

• Daniel Everett: Endangered Languages and Lost Knowledge (video), presentation for the Rosetta Project: Choose one video with Dan Everett on Piraha

• check if somebody has chosen it already, if yes, choose another one
• write the title on your page,
• give a summary of its contents
• did you learn something interesting from it (if not, choose another video)

BONUS QUESTION

4. Why is the little language Piraha so important in the discussions about language? More specifically:

• Why is the question whether the Piraha can count so important for understanding how the human language works?
• If that what Dan Everett claims turns out to be true, which linguistic theory will turn out to be wrong?
• What is recursion?
• Which are the two phenomena that suggest that Piraha does not have recursion?
• Which of these phenomena existed in Hungarian, most probably, being recognizable in present-day Hungarian?

Sign languages. Discussion of fresh news concerning Hungarian Sign Language. An example: NSL. Guest talk: Prof. A.M. Vonen (Oslo).

1. Find Hungarian and international links to the event discussed in classroom (http://fidesz.hu/index.php?Cikk=139067) and review them.

2. Review http://fidesz.hu/index.php?Cikk=139067.

3. Read the material Cl. 3  .

• Find the corresponding Wikipedia and other links in Dutch/Hungarian about these topics
• copy the material on your page,
• and read it -- I might check your knowledge in the next class.
• always copy the link to the source webpage, or the reference to the book if applicable.

4. How are sign languages related to each other and spoken languages?

5. Which SLs can be found in the WALS and in Ethnologue?

BONUS QUESTION: What did you learn from the talk by Prof. Arnfinn Vonen?

Oct.

7

1. Open the following links:

• http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp
  • What do you find about Hungarian/Dutch there?
• wals.info
  • Describe the information that you find about the morphological information about Hungarian/Dutch on the maps belonging to the features/chapters in the WALS database. Each of you gets a different assignment. You can find your two features/chapters HERE.
  • Do not discuss data from other languages, but try to understand what the chapter is about.
  • NL: If there are no Dutch data, report on Hungarian, and try to find out the Dutch values for these features.

2. Run through the material that you have collected on your own page for the previous meetings. I  will ask you to present some interesting points that you have found out. Revise as much as you can do, but do not read more than you can read in 30 minutes.

Oct.

14

1. Work on the collaborative task (the coordinator for Dutch: Janka, the coordinator for Hungarian: Bori). Here is the table to fill in HU, NL.

• Fill in the table on Hungarian or Dutch on the basis of the information that you find in Wals.info about the features listed in the table.
• Please provide a short description in your native language about the feature.
• NL: Indicate which information is available in WALS and which information you need to provide on your own or the basis of German. Provide the information. Here is an article that may help those who read German [PDF of MS].
• Dear coordinator, list the names of the students who worked on the task in your team, and underline your name.

2. Open the following link:

• wals.info
  • Describe the information that you find about Hungarian/Dutch on the maps belonging to the features/chapters in the WALS database. Each of you gets a different assignment. You can find your two features/chapters HERE.
  • Do not discuss data from other languages, but try to understand what the chapter is about.
  • NL: If there are no Dutch data, report on Hungarian, and try to find out the Dutch values for these features.

Oct.

21

• Here is the workspace for the Dutch assignment.
• Here is the workspace for the Hungarian assignment.
• The two responsible students, please fill in the table on the basis of collective work and send me the grades of the individual students in your group.

Nov.

4

Here is the workspace for the Hungarian assignment. (for Zsofi)

Choose a Uralic language-Dutch dialect, and collect the information about it, including the following sources:

• wals.info
  
• www.ethnologue.com
  
• wikipedia or glottopedia
  
• YouTube
  
• On November 10, at 10 a.m. we meet for an excursion to the Linguistic Institute We will see the phonetics laboratory, the department of Finno-Ugristics, and meet many good linguists! Prepare everything you always wanted to ask about languages and linguistics but were always too shy to ask.
  

"Idén van a 60. évfordulója az intézet megalapitásának [...] Minden releváns területen érdemben járultak hozzá az Elméleti és Kísérletes Nyelvészeti Osztály tagjai a nemzetközi kutatásokhoz (pl. generativ és antigenerativ
nyelvészeti kutatások, a magyar nyelv leirásának új belátásai más nyelvekhez képest, szintaxis, szemantika, morfológia, fonológia, a
modellek és a leirások, pszicholingvisztikai és neurolingvisztikai eredmények, számitógépes nyelvészeti keretben tett innovációk, két- és
többnyelvűséggel kapcsolatos modellek és adatok, stb.)"

Nov.

11

HERE IS THE LINK TO YOUR EXPEDITION DIARY on Nov. 10, 2009!

Nov.

18

Make position papers of the chapters of the following books:

Dutch group

Nichols, Johanna. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Dahl, Östen. The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity. Studies in language companion series v. 71. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004.

Hungarian group

Heine, Bernd, Kuteva, Tania. The Changing Languages of Europe. Oxford linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Comrie, Bernard. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology. 2° ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Your colleagues have the books, each of you should take a different chapter. The responsible for the books in the Hungarian group is ..., in the Dutch group...  

Dec.

2

Be prepared to talk about the tasks you fulfilled for the last two classes: the language that you have chosen and about the chapter of the book that was your assignment. The reponsible persons for Dutch and Hungarian in WALS, be prepared with the findings. In the coming days you will get a new chapter to review, by email, or on this webpage.

Komi Permjaaks, komipermyak pages

Dec.

9

Collaborative task. ű

Meeting with dr. Larisza Ponomareva, ELTE on komi permyak.

Larisa Ponomareva's presentation, pptx files in Hungarian (many pics) part1, part2, part3, part4, part5, part6, part7, part8, part9, part10, part11.

Dec.

16