Intro to Linguistics
SAT Score Range
•
4 sessions
•
SH
AS
AC
+38
This series ended on July 31, 2022. All 1:1 and group chats related to this series are disabled 7 days after the last session.
About
[Schoolhouse Summer Camp]
Linguistics is the science behind human languages, which we of course use all the time. In this series, we will cover a variety of fascinating concepts, tools, and trivia.
Examples:
- Concept: "Minimal Pairs" - Some languages care about certain sound distinctions while others don't, e.g. "ta" and "tha" in Hindi.
- Tools: Why do vowels sound different from consonants? Praat plots a spectrogram of your speech so you can visually see the difference.
- Trivia: English and the Austronesian language Mbarbaram both use the word “dog” to refer to canines.
Tutored by
Schedule
✋ ATTENDANCE POLICY
You are free to attend/skip whichever sessions you want.
SESSION 1
3
Jul
SESSION 1
Enrichment
Enrichment
Sun 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM UTCJul 3, 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM UTC
Intro to phonetics:
- Which part of your mouth produces which sounds
- International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
- Minimal pairs.
- Phonological rules. Example: When do English vowels become nasalized?
- British, New York, Boston accents
SESSION 2
10
Jul
SESSION 2
Enrichment
Enrichment
Sun 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM UTCJul 10, 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM UTC
Phonetics II:
- Physics of sound, as it applies to linguistics
- Praat spectrograms
SESSION 3
17
Jul
SESSION 3
Enrichment
Enrichment
Sun 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM UTCJul 17, 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM UTC
Intro to syntax:
- Syntax trees
- Natural language processing (NLP) demo
SESSION 4
31
Jul
SESSION 4
Enrichment
Enrichment
Sun 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM UTCJul 31, 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM UTC
Linguistics stories/trivia
Student presentations: Bring some story/trivia to share.
Signup sheet (only sign up if you are 100% sure you will attend this session): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZJmj0kIrNI_fYG3kBG9jw5QdfWIlQs1spioV2BQiA74/edit?usp=sharing
Examples:
- English Great Vowel Shift
- Language acquisition (babies, adults)
- Story of Nicaraguan Sign language
- Mbarbaram "dog" and other false cognates
- Piraha language
- Tones (e.g. Mandarin, Cantonese)
- Mythological story (e.g. Native American, etc.)
- ???