MA Courses
For information and guidelines regarding the duration of the course, the number of courses and credit requirement per semester, and eligibility requirements for the awarding of the degree and related matters, the students are advised to consult the relevant Academic Ordinances of the University. The students are advised to consult the course supervisor or Chairperson, if need be, at the time of registration every semester. Also, for any further details log on to http://www.jnu.ac.in
Given below is the list of courses offered by the Centre for students of M.A. in Linguistics. The students are advised to consult the students the faculty advisor or Chairperson, if need be, at the time of registration every semester.
List of Courses for M.A.
| Course No. | Title | Credits |
| LE401L | Introduction to Linguistics | 4 |
| LE402L | Introduction to General Phonetics | 4 |
| LE403L | Introduction to Socio-linguistics | 4 |
| LE404L | Grammatical Theories and Models | 4 |
| LE405L | Field Methods | 4 |
| LE406L | Seminar | 4 |
| LE407L | Semiotics and the Philosophy of Structures-I | 4 |
| LE408L | Introduction to Psycholinguistics | 4 |
| LE409L | Applied Linguistics | 4 |
| LE410L | Phonological Analysis | 4 |
| LE411L | Morphological and Syntactic Analysis | 4 |
| LE412L | History of Linguistics | 4 |
| LE413L | Semiotics and the Philosophy of Structures-II | 4 |
| LE414L | Historical and Comparative Linguistics | 4 |
| LE415L | Indian Grammatical Tradition | 4 |
| LE416L | Semantics: Theories and Analysis | 4 |
| LE417L | Introduction to Stylistics | 4 |
| LE418L | Readings in Linguistics | 4 |
| LE419L | Semiotics and the Philosophy of Structures-III | 4 |
| LE420L | Language in Society | 4 |
| LE421L | Introduction to Computational Linguistics | 4 |
| LE422L | Introduction to Natural Language Processing | 4 |
| LE423L | Artificial Intelligence/Programming in Prolog | 4 |
| LE424L | Linguistics and the Human Sciences | 4 |
| LE448L | Language Typology | 4 |
| LE453L | Pragmatics | 4 |
| LE460L | Acoustics and Experimental Phonetics | 4 |
| LE463L | Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology | 4 |
| LE465L | Writing Grammars | 4 |
| LE469L | Semiotics of Conceptual Structures & Discourse Analysis | 4 |
| LE472L | Study of Speech Sounds | 4 |
| LE486L | Generative Morphology | 4 |
| LE487L | Generative Syntax | 4 |
| LE488L | Generative Syntax-II | 4 |
| LE498L | Introducing Biolinguistics | 4 |
| LE499L | Optimality Theory | 4 |
| LE495L | Language, Mind and Brain Studies | 4 |
| LE500L | Post Structuralist Approaches to Language and Culture | 4 |
Descriptions of some of the courses regularly Offered to the students of M.A. Linguistics
LE 401 L Introduction to Linguistics
The course introduces students to the basics of Linguistics. It quashes many myths about language. Concepts such as Langue and Parole, linguistic sign, Relativity, Sign language are discussed. Biological encoding of language, how we differ from other species, what are language universals, and what is the connection between linguistic diversity and biodiversity are some of the issues discussed. Some other salient features of the course are the study of language and brain, language and politics, how language is manifested in society, how language survives, changes and evolves in a contact situation. The course gives a fair idea of the areas that modern linguistics addresses to.
LE 463 L Introduction to Phonetics & Phonology
The course aims at introducing the basic principles and tenets of General Phonetics and Phonology. Students develop proficiency in recognizing, transcribing, and reproducing speech sounds. The later half of the course will be concerned with the function, behaviour and organization of sounds of linguistics units. Students will be introduced to simple phonological rule writing. The course is designed to train students in solving simple phonological problems and help them understand the crucial theoretical issues concerning phonetics and phonology.
LE 411 L Introduction to Morphological and Syntactic Analysis
Language design and morphology. Identification of morphemes; distribution of morphemes; morphological structure and its analysis. Analysis of grammatical categories. Concentration on the basic syntactic constructions, the major hypotheses, and the argumentation techniques that have played a major role in the development of generative grammar.
LE 410 L Phonological Analysis
Basic understanding of the fundamental concepts of generative phonology. Distinctive feature theory and formulation of phonological rules. Examination of phonological structure of nature languages. Exercises in phonological descriptions. The empirical justification of phonological analysis. Argumentation.
The course provides a methodology for collection and analysis linguistic data for the determination of phonological, morphological and syntactic systems of lesser known languages of India through the use of native informants. Students are also trained to prepare small dictionaries and sociolinguistic profiles. The course involves a field trip to appropriate language areas to collect first-hand information.
Some of the major areas of application of linguistics are introduced with a focus on one or more of the following:
Language teaching analysis: Theory and practice. The concept of pedagogical grammars; impact of linguistic theory and analysis in the area of language pedagogy; the concept of mother tongue, SL and FL; the development of structural models/techniques followed by communicative models/ approaches to the teaching of MT, SL and FL; error analysis and contrastive analysis in language pedagogy; use of audio-visual aids, language labs and computer aided technology in language teaching; testing and evaluation principles and procedures.
Translation: Provides an overview of translatology and linguistic theory of translation. Particular emphasis is laid on interlingual literary translation with forms in context, problems of translation such as loss and gain, culture, transfer, structural and semantic equivalence, etc.
Lexicography and lexicology: Principles, problems and procedures in writing mono/bi/multilingual dictionaries, encyclopaedic dictionaries.
Speech and Language Pathology: Provides an overview of the various kinds of communication disorders, both developmental and acquired; procedures and tests currently in use in speech/language clinics for assessment, diagnosis and therapy/ remedial process.
LE 469 L Semiotics of Conceptual Structures and Discourse Analysis
The Abelardian semiotics of the twelfth century. The idealist Cartesian theories of sign and proposition. The empirical theories of the hypothetical evolution of signification of Condillac and Destutt de Tracy. Modern philosophers of language: Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, L. Althusser, J. P. Sartre. The Marxist distinction of the real object and the object of knowledge. Nature and culture. Linguistic competence and discourse competence. Collective, unconscious acquisition of language and the individual, conscious creative process of discourse.
LE 462 L Chomskyan Syntax – Theory and Analysis
This course examines the origins and assumptions, and attempts theoretical evaluation of Chomskyan transformational syntax from his Syntactic Structures (1957) to Barriers (1986). It will focus primarily on the current state of the theory popularly called `Government and Binding’ including developments till mid-nineties. The course is intended to train the students in using the categories of this theory to analyse the syntax of Indian languages.
LE 460 L Acoustics and Experimental Phonetics
This course provides an introduction to the various techniques currently in use in the study of speech sounds. Although the thrust is on analysis and study of the acoustic aspect of speech sounds the programme includes experimental methods & techniques used in articulatory phonetics as well. The students are familiarized with spectral patterns, a study of formant patterns, voice and harmonics using spectrography.
LE 404 L Grammatical Theories and Models
The concept of paradigm, paradigm shift and development of theories & models. Traditional, philosophical study of language leading to the 19th century historicism; prescriptivism to descriptivism in the beginning of the 20th century; empiricism and rationalism, behaviourism and cognitivism, innate hypothesis and universal grammar. A study of models beginning with empiricists’ structural descriptive grammars to TG grammars; Semantic grammars, socio semantic Systemic Grammar, and communicative function oriented models of grammars.
LE 416 L Semantics: Theories & Analysis
What is meaning? The relation of meaning to grammar, and how it is to be accommodated in an overall model of linguistic organization. Semantic fields, lexical semantics, componential analysis, dictionaries, semantic universals, semantic roles, speech act semantics, conversational implicature and such other topics are dealt with. Indian, American and European theories of meaning are surveyed critically.
LE 456 L Sociolinguistics
This course provides an introduction to the kinds of problems sociolinguistics deals with and the theories and methods of analysis which have been developed to handle these problems. Special emphasis is laid on multilingualism, language maintenance and shift, language planning and standardization with reference to Indian languages.
LE 496L Developmental Psycholinguistics
I.Theories, Models and Approaches to the study of early speech and language development. Cognitive Linguistics and Biological Foundations of Language: Chomsky and Lenneberg. Innate Hypothesis, Language University and the notion of Competence.
How is language acquired? principles and Parameters Hypothesis.
II.Clinical (development) Psycholinguistics: How is language acquired in case of Hearing Impaired? A brief introduction to Sign Language. Developmental disorders of communication – Dyslexia, Aphasia, Stuttering & Stammering; Assessment, Evaluation, Therapeutic procedures.
III. Language, Culture and Cognition: The Sapir – Whorf Hypothesis, Lexical and Grammatical influences on Cognition, Linguistic Universals; Perceptual, Cognition and Social categories.
NEW COURSES
Introduction to Biolinguistics
This course proposes to introduce the subject matter beginning with the biological nature of language and its importance for the study of human mind and brain. The course is organized around the following questions:
What does language tell us about human brain and mind? In what sense is it species specific? These questions are discussed in the context of:
- Acquisition of speech and language
- Sign language and its acquisition
- Speech and language disorders
- Core properties of human language, and core properties of mathematical skills.
- Evolution of brain and evolution of language.
- Genes and language/speech
LE 471 L Cognitive Linguistics
Teaching is done under 3 board areas:
Neuro-linguistics and Aphasiology
First Language Acquisition
Cognitive semantics.
Under the last, we discuss: Iconicity, Metaphor, Categorisation, Cultural Models in Language and Cognition, Grammar as a conceptual organising system (including Language and Spatial Cognition).
LE 448 L Language Typology
The course aims at studying the basic question of contemporary linguistics: in what ways do languages differ, and in what ways are they all alike? Attempt is made to examine the existing classificatory models and criteria for their evaluation as well as for the construction of viable alternatives. Common morphological devices and their syntactic correlations are examined. Specific topics may include word formation processes, reduplication, ergativity, agreement, case marking, word order, syntactic and phonological systems etc. Data will be largely drawn from Indian languages.
LE 496 L Neurolinguistics and Language disorders
I. Brain: Structure and Function. Cerebral Dominance, Lateralization and Distributed Function. Presentation of Language in Brain: Biolinguistics and Connectionists' Models and Approaches.
II. Issues in Neurolinguistics and Aphasiology: Models of Brain - Language relationship: Classical Connectionist Model, Hierarchical Models, Global Models, Process Models.
III. Brain Pathology and Language Breakdown: Aphasia and its classification, Linguistic account of Aphasia, Clinical Aphasiology. - an overview. Dyslexya and its classification - an overview. Case Studies and interpretation of language of aphasics and dyslexics.
Numbers have to be assigned to the following new courses:
LEL Language Technology
The Course introduces the students the basics of data analysis and design, selection of software, introduction to databases, data formats and standards, creation of metadata, fundamentals of sound and video recording and editing techniques, tools for transcribing, archiving issues and annotation issues. Exercise in Semantic extraction using LFG and syntactic structures.
LEL Language Documentation and Description
As many as half of the world’s languages are endangered as they have ceased to be transferred to the next generation. A rough estimate is that out of the 6000 living languages approximately 50% of them will vanish from this earth without being recorded. The linguists around the world have pledged to document these endangered languages. The course will introduce the concepts of documentation and description of languages, the relationship between the two, and their relevance for linguistics and other disciplines. Documentation will embrace information and communication technologies to create digital sound and video recordings, to integrate them with text and other explanatory or analytical linguistic material. The course also discusses fundamental issues that are involved in describing and documenting the Indian languages. Various methodologies that are employed by linguists around the globe will be discussed. Detail discussion on the ethics of language description and documentation, especially with reference to documenting marginalized and endangered languages will be made. Special software developed for documentation in Europe will be considered and modified for the use of Indian languages.
LEL Documenting Lexicons
Mode of evaluation: One Mid-Semester test and a submission of a small dictionary of 1000 words drawn from the field data.
A practical course to give training in producing professional looking dictionary using time-tested sophisticated computational tools, such as SIL’s Toolbox and Lexware. Systematic extraction of lexical databases using these tools to generate a comprehensive compilation of lexical knowledge. Students will be taught how to use digitized audio, video and still picture files for illustrations, exemplify each lexical item with interlinear translation of field-data, assign appropriate semantic fields, record phonetic and sociolinguistic variations and etymological and historical facts if available, and recognize morphemic breaks and grammatical categories. The course will be of immense help in bringing out field-dictionaries. It will also train students to prepare comparative dictionary of more than two languages of the same family or of different families. The issue of incorporating different scripts associated with each language will also be considered.
