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Theoretical Linguistics Department

Course Description and Syllabi

 

General courses:

Semester One:

Subject	code	Pre-requisite	Credit Hours
Arabic Language	01101	none	3

 

Semester Two:

Subject	code	Pre-requisite	Credit Hours
Psychology		01101	3

 

Semester Three:

Subject	code	Pre-requisite	Credit Hours
Islamic civilization	03110	none	3

 

Listening and Speaking A

(4 Credit Hours)

Pre-requisite: None

Course Description

Listening and speaking skills are closely intertwined. Since the interaction between these two skills in real time communication is essential for all types of discourse, the listening and the speaking components of this course are integrated.

The listening component aims at developing students’ ability to understand real-life spoken English in both academic and social context through recordings of spontaneous, natural speech which include a variety of voices and speaking styles.

The speaking component builds on the listening input for the purpose of developing speaking skills that help students take part in class and in other academic and general situations.

Course Syllabus

1. The Listening Component:

Students will be exposed to listening input that stimulates their interest and motivates them to engage in class activities and discussion. All the listening exercises should be geared toward helping the students identify and employ listening strategies for different types of listening comprehension situations. This is to be carried out through a wide range of recorded materials (audio tapes or CDs, videos or DVDs) that are carefully selected in terms of their length and level of difficulty. These recordings include varieties of English use such as in the following situations:

• General transactional conversations
• Talks and speeches in academic contexts
• Other listening activities that expose students to a selection of vocabulary and speaking styles used in academic and everyday language

The listening activities introduce students to sound recognition and train them to do the following:

• identify and understand the general topic and signpost language
• identify specific details
• listen for definitions and work out meaning from spoken context
• recognise a wide range of words in isolation and in the stream of speech
• recognise segmental features such as individual phonemes and minimal pairs

 

1. The Speaking Component:

The listening input is used to develop students’ communication skills. Different types of oral activities are designed to encourage students to engage in productive communication in order to improve their spoken English. Simple, general topics that are related to student’s life should be introduced first to establish confidence among the learners. Topics that may be presented at this level are university life, culture, art, literature, careers and any other topics that enhance students’ ability to understand and comprehend ideas and thoughts, and to relate these ideas and thoughts to their own experiences as students and as members of a larger community.

In teaching listening and speaking, the following points will be emphasized:

• Cooperative learning is encouraged through pair and group work to give students an opportunity to produce spoken language.

• Students are given a specific reason for listening, so that they are able to bring real-life listening and speaking skills to bear on the task.

• It is recommended that students be sensitized to a particular point through a variety of activities before being asked to understand it intellectually

• Recycling of vocabulary throughout the course is promoted in order to bring words back into consciousness through engaging activities

Reading& Writing   A

(3 Credit Hours)

Reading

Provides an access to natural life like texts through graded reading tasks.

Develops reading strategies, step by step from skimming to deduction.

Encourages an awareness of different approaches according to reading to purpose and type of texts.

Writing

Develops writing skills clearly and thoroughly from sentences to discourse.

practices writing a variety of factual and creative texts.

Practices and expands vocabulary skills systemically.

Teaches and practices dictionary skills.

Vocabulary & Dictionary Skills

 (3 Credit Hours)

The aim of the course is to help students to acquire basic techniques in learning vocabulary. In addition to this, the course is an attempt to encourage students to take more responsibility for their own vocabulary learning through using dictionary and glossaries. Thus, the courses focus on acquiring the skill of dictionary as source of words such as pronunciation, grammatical behavior, meaning and use of words in example sentences.

General Objectives

The course aims the following:

Which English words do students need most to learn?

How can we make these words seem important to the students?

How can many needed terms related to each specialization be taught during the first semester in order to provide foundation of language of applied linguistics, translations, literature and general linguistics

The course covers the following topics:

Different kinds of dictionary

Bilingual English dictionaries (Arabic English – English Arabic)

Monolingual dictionaries (e.g. English only)

Native speakers’ dictionaries such as long man dictionary of contemporary English, Collins Corbulid English Dictionary). learners’ dictionaries such as (Cambridge learner’s Dictionary, Oxford Learner’s Dictionary)

A reference dictionary is organized according to meaning categories. This is generally classed as thesaurus such as Collins paperback Thesaurus.

The use of learners’ dictionaries by providing dictionary entry from different types of dictionary.

3. Specialized vocabulary will be taught through short texts and applying dictionary entries .

English Grammar A

 (3 Credit Hours)

 

The aim of this course is to acquaint students with English grammar. At this stage, students will learn the following: Pronouns (types and function) Nouns (types, function and form of noun), adjectives (descriptive and proper adjectives), adverbs (types and position), prepositions (place and time), articles (the basic usage), Present tense (simple and progressive), past tense (simple and progressive), simple future and passive voice for the aforementioned tenses).

Pronouns:

1. Types:
   • Personal pronouns
   • Indefinite pronouns
   • Demonstrative pronouns
   • Possessive pronouns
   • Reflexive pronouns
   • Reciprocal Pronouns
2. Function:
   • Subject/object of the verb.

• Subject complement
• Object of preposition

 

Nouns:

1. Types:
   • Personal nouns
   • Concrete or abstract nouns
   • Collective nouns
   • Nouns compounds
   • Mass/ unit
2. Function:

• Subject/ object of the verb
• Object complement
• Object of preposition

1. Form of noun:

• Inflectional forms(gender/number)
• Possessive inflectional form
• Derivational form of nouns.

Articles:

• Indefinite articles a/an (with common countable nouns)
• Definite article THE

Present tense (simple and progressive) , past tense (simple and progressive) , simple future and passive voice for the aforementioned tenses)

 

Listening and speaking B

 (4 Credit Hours)

Students in the listening component are exposed to varieties of natural occurring spoken English through listening exercises that are intended to develop strategies for comprehending connected spoken English as used in narrative, descriptive or argumentative texts.

The aim of the spoken component is to develop what the students have started in listening and speaking A. They are to be given a good opportunity to move their communication skills outside the classroom by negotiating and discussing issues as well as situations that resemble real life language use. Thus, students should be taught how to interact, in the target language, with other people in any of the many situations they may find themselves in. The use of role- plays, pair and group work, teacher- student work, media- based material; TV, radio, magazines, video cassettes, etc… is believed to be essential for highly interactive material that promotes fluency and compressibility in spoken English.

It is always suggested that listening- lead- to speaking methodology would promote communication skills and match real-life use.

Reading & Writing   B

 (3 Credit Hours)

Objectives

The course develops systematic development of reading and writing skills. It offers on variety of texts based on real life situations and develops the reading situations skills using these reading skills on a model for written work.

English Grammar B

(3 credit hours)

At this stage, students will be exposed to the following: present perfect (simple and continuous) , past perfect ( simple and continuous) , Future (continuous and perfect), conditionals (real, unreal (present) and unreal (past) , modals ( can, could, may, might, must, have to, need, should, ought.

Course Syllabus

Present perfect (simple and continuous)

• Time expressions
• Stative؛/ active verbs
• Affirmative/Negative/Interrogative

Past Perfect (simple and continuous)

• Time expression
• Contrast with simple past
• Affirmative/Negative/Interrogative

Future (continuous and perfect)

• Time expression
• Affirmative/Negative/Interrogative

Conditionals

• Real conditions
• Unreal conditions (present)
• Unreal Conditions (past)

Wish/Hope

• Present
• Past

Modals

• Can/could (have)

1. ability 2. possibility 3. permission    4. requests

• may/ might (have)

1. permission 2. possibility 3. wishes

• must/have to/ need (have)

1. obligation 2. logical conclusion 3. necessity

• should/ ought to (have)

1. strong possibility 2. advisability

• will

1. determination 2. request 3. invitation 4. assumption 5. insistence

Passive

• With reference to the tenses studied in Grammar I and Grammar II
• With prepositional phrases
• Difference between passive and adjectival phrases
• pseudo passive
• Semantic changes

Articles

Review of the basic uses of articles

• The with mass and proper nouns
• a/an with mass and proper nouns
• zero article with singular count nouns

Adjectives

• Sequence of adjectives
• Comparative and superlative forms
• Derivational form of adjectives

Adverbs

• Sequence of adverbs
• Comparative and superlative forms
• Derivational form of adverbs

Introduction to Translation

 (3 credit hours)

Course description

This course is an introductory course which allows students to get acquainted with translation theories and practice for the first time. The aim objective of this course is to provide students with basic ideas about translation process and the contemporary theories set out by some scholars in this field and to enable them to improve their English and increase their lexical stock while at the same acquire the art of translating from English into Arabic and vice versa.

Part one

What is a translation study?

What is translation?

The translator as mediator

What is a translation theory?

Types of translation

Translation as a process

Cat ford’s translation process

Eugene Nida’s translation process

Nida’s componential analysis of meaning (CA)

Peter Newmark’s translation process

Translation as a product

Methods of translation

The difference between Semantics and Communicative Translation

The problem of Equivalence in Translation

Author-oriented translation

Reader-oriented translation

Text-oriented translation

Part two:

Meaning and translation

Arabic-English language and culture

Culture Aspects (social-religious-ideological-literary)

Denotative and connotative meaning

Collocation

Phrasal verbs

Idioms and proverbs

Passive voice in translation

Translation problems (Lexical, Grammatical, Culture)

Translating English passive into Arabic

Translating English sentences into Arabic

Translating Arabic sentences into English

Part three

The practical part of the course consists of selected graded units of language starting from morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, simple sentences, complex sentences, compound sentences, paragraphs to texts taken from various sources(scientific, literary, religious, journalistic, legal and political).

Introduction to Linguistics

 (3 credit hours)

This is an introductory course in the field of modern linguistics. It covers the basic ideas concerning the scientific study of language as a system of communication and a form of human behaviour.

The content of the course:

1. What is linguistics?
2. What is language?

• The nature of language
• Defining language
• Animal vs. human communication
• The function of language

3. The scope of linguistics

• Language and parole
• Competence and performance
• Language structure and language use

4. Investigating language

• The use of intuition
• The use of corpus linguistics

5. A historical introduction

• The early contribution of ancient linguistics
  • The Indians
  • The Greek
  • The Arabs

6. Nineteen and Twentieth Century Linguistics

• Historical linguistics
• Descriptive
• Generative linguistics
• Synchronic linguistics vs. diagnostic linguistics
• Prescriptive vs. descriptive
• Structural linguistics
• Transformational-Generative Grammar

7. Principles and levels of analysis

• Phonetics
• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Meaning in context: pragmatics

8. Current issues and other areas of linguistics

• Universal grammar
• Formal linguistics
• Functional linguistics

9. Other areas of linguistics: Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics

Introduction to English Literature

(3 Credit Hours)

Course Description

This is the initial course in the core of the literature courses which are offered to serve the following objectives:

• To expose students to the creative use of language.
• To provide students with the opportunity to read extensively.
• To train students to acquire an analytical approach to a literary text.
• To stimulate students’ interest in imaginative writings.
• To develop in the students a sense of appreciation to literary work

This introductory course introduces students to the three major genres of literature; poetry, drama and fiction by exploring the different literary elements, devices and features found in each genre and examining these in representative texts.

Course Syllabus

Introduction to English literature is designed primarily to familiarize students with different aspects and forms of literature. Short passages and complete literary works are analysed to exemplify the literary elements in the three basic genres; poetry, drama and fiction.

The main components of this course are as follow:

• Defining literature
• Types of English literature: poetry, fiction and drama
• Defining poetry
  • The language of poetry: symbols, metaphors, similes, etc.
  • Main types of English poetry: sonnets, narrative, descriptive, etc.
• Defining fiction
  • Elements of fiction: characters, plot, setting
• Defining drama
  • Elements of drama
  • Types of plays: comedy, melodrama, etc.

Introduction to Applied Linguistics

 (4 Credit Hours)

The course is a general introduction to the area of applied linguistics. It covers the following topics:

1. General introduction to linguistics

• What is linguistics
• What is language
• Levels of analysis
• Definitions
  • Sound
  • Syntax
  • Morphology
  • Semantics

2. Areas of applied linguistics

• Psycholinguistics
• Socio-linguistics
• Language teaching

3. The techniques of applied linguistics

• Contrastive linguistic studies
• The study of learner’s language (error analysis)

4. The application of linguistics

• Linguistics in language teaching / learning
• Linguistics and translation
• Linguistics and literature (stylistics)

All of the above topics are introduced briefly and systematically.

 

General phonetics

(4 Credit Hours)

 

1. Basic notions

1.1 Sounds versus letters (speech and writing)

1.2 Asymmetrical and symmetrical relations

2. Speech production

2.1 Respiration

2.2 Phonation

2.3 Articulation

3. Speech sounds

3.1 Consonants

3.2 Vowels

3.3 Articultory difference

3.4 Distributional differences

3.5. International Phonetic Alphabets (IPA)

3.6 Cardinal Vowel Theory

4. Consonants classification

4.1 Articulatory criteria

4.2 Voicing

4.3 Place of articulation

4.4 Manner of articulation

5. Vowel identification

5.1 Auditory criteria

5.2 Resonance chamber

5.3 Tongue position

5.4  Vowel qualities

5.5 RP phonemic system

5.6 Syllable structure and stress pattern

5.7 Strong versus weak forms

5.8 Connected speech and assimilation

 

Language

 (3 credit hours)

 

1. What is language

1.1 Properties of human language

1.2 Functions of language

2. The origin of language
3. Language history and change
4. Language and regional variations
5. Language and social variations
6. Language and culture

6.1 accent

6.2 Dialect

6.3 Idiolect

6.4 Register

6.5 style

7. Branches of linguistics

7.1 Sociolinguistics

7.2 Psycholinguistics

7.2.1 Remedial linguistics

7.2.2 Speech disorders

7.2.3 Neuro-linguistics

7.3 Applied linguistics

7.3.1 Language teaching and leaning

7.3.2 Stylistics

7.3.3 Translation and interpretation

8. Language levels

7.1 Phonetics

7.2 Phonology

7.3 Morphology

7.4 Syntax

Historical Linguistics

(4 credit hours)

 

1. Introduction
2. The Indians
3. Greece
4. Rome
5. European Middle Ages

5.1 Renaissance and after

7. Comparative and historical linguistics in the 19^th century

8.1 Structural linguistics in Europe

8.2 Structural linguistics in America

8.3 Transformational Grammar

8.4 Tagmemic, systemic, stratification grammars and other approaches.

Linguistic schools

(4 credit hours)

 

The objective of this course is to provide students with a background in different schools of linguistics such as :

• Traditional Latin influenced models.
• European structuralism.
• American structuralism
• Transformational generative grammar
• Scale and category
• Functionalism
• Case grammar.

Semantics

(4 Credit Hours)

Course Description

This course of semantics has been carefully planned to introduce students to all the main elements of semantics in a simple step by step fashion. Students begin by discovering the values and fascination of studying semantics and move on to such topics as sense and reference, basic sense relations, simple logic, word meaning, and interpersonal meaning. This course meets the needs of those who will develop their skills in the field of the study of meaning.

Course Syllabus

1. Basic ideas in semantics

• About semantics
• Sentences, utterances, and propositions
• Reference and sense

2. From reference

• Referring expressions
• Predicates
• Universe of discourse
• Deixis and definiteness
• Words and thing: extensions and prototypes

3. Sense

• Sense properties and stereotype
• Sense relations

4. Logic

• About logic
• A notion of simple propositions
• Connectives

Phonology I

 (4 credit hours)

This aim of the course is to provide a background on the following topics:

• Some background concepts.
• Phonetics and Phonology.
• Levels of sound representation.
• The external organization of speech sound.
• Phonological analysis.
• Structure and system.

Morphology I

(4 credit hours)

It focuses on studying principles of morphological analysis, word formation, phrase and structures based on contemporary linguistic theories put forward in late 20th century. By the end of the course students will be able to read and understand modern morphological analysis and apply it to examples from different language other than English.

 

Syntax I

(4 credit hours)

Pre-requisite:

Course Description

Grammars I, II, III cover the main descriptive rules of English grammar. Then the students’ main task is to apply these rules to different grammatical operation. This course looks at English from a different point of view. It gives a systematic description of English syntax. It aims at giving the students tools of describing different thorough understanding of English syntax. On the whole, this course dives a careful and a simple account of major areas of English syntax that will provide a foundation for more advanced work in theoretical linguistics.

The content of the syllabus:

The organization of the grammar

A- Unit of Grammar

1. The sentence
2. The clause
3. The phrase
4. The morpheme

B- Syntactic classes and function

C- Sentence patterns

The Verb Phrase

A- The structure of the verb phrase

B- Finite and non-finite verb phrase

D- Types of verb complementation

1. intransitive verbs
2. mono-transitive verbs
3. Di-transitive verbs
4. Complex transitive verbs

A- verb classes in English and their environment

B- Phrasal and prepositional verbs

1. What is a phrasal verb?
2. Types of phrasal verb
3. Transitive and intransitive verbs
4. prepositional verbs

 

English Phonology

(4 credit hours)

Pre-requisite:

 

Allophones: aspiration / contextually determiners / free variation

Phonemes

Minimal Pairs: distinctive features

English Morphology

(4 credit hours)

Pre-requisite:

 

Word formation

Types of inflectional morphology in English

Types of derivational morphology in English

Structure and meaning of English words

Prosodic morphology in English

Structure and change of meaning of words in English

Suffixation system in English

Overgeneralization and undergeneralization in English

Taxonomy

English Syntax

(4 credit hours)

Pre-requisite:

Introduction to syntax as science of structure of words in a sentence

Chomsky’s transformational generative grammar theory

Bloomfield’s structural theory

Binding Theory

Unified theory of movement

English Phonetics

(4 credit hours)

 

Production of speech sounds

English sound system: English consonant and vowel production

Consonant: voicing / place / manner

Vowel: short vowels / long vowels / reduced vowels / monophthongs / triphthongs / diphthongs

Speech mechanism system

Articulatory system: English speech organs (active articulators / passive articulators)

Respiratory system

Phonatory system

Suprasegmental features: stress and intonation

English phonetic transcription

Research Methodology (Theory)

 (4 Credit Hours)

Course Description

The aim of this course is to enhance the students’ understanding and application in some technical aspects of research. Students should know how to choose a topic, write a purpose, make a preliminary outline, prepare a bibliography and footnote entries for different references. Students are also made familiar with the library and its resources for research. Writing III is a prerequisite. Thus students are expected to write coherently and present well organized research papers.

Course syllabus

• Introduction to Key Terms
• World Wide Web Resources
• Library visit and assignment
• Choosing a Topic
• Using the library
• Narrowing the focus
• Finding relevant books and articles
• Preliminary bibliography
• Preliminary thesis statement
• Preliminary outline
• Plagiarism
• Taking notes (summary, paraphrase, quotation)
• Revised thesis statement and outline
• Format of APA Style
• Format of MLA Style Sheet
• A student’s Research Paper
• Writing first draft

 

Teaching Methodology and Strategies

 (4 credit hours)

This aim of the course is to give an overall picture of the traditional approaches to ELT together with more recent development. This course is divided into two parts. The first part is definitions and theory which underline the English language teaching practice. The second part is techniques and application.

The content of the course

1. Terms related to ELT:

* authentic text and task

*choral repetition

*Communicative activity

*context

*controlled practice or guided practice

*creative practice or freer practice

*drill

*deductive learning approach

*elicit

*error analysis

*formal instruction

*gist

*inductive learning approach

*input

*information gap activity

*language teaching

* the language syllabus

*method

*methodology

*output

*receptive and productive skills

*Second language acquisition and second language learning

* teaching practice

2. Teaching and learning the language

*the nature of language

*the nature of learning

3. Learning theories

*the behaviorist theory

*the cognitive theory

*implications to classroom practice

4.Structuralism in language teaching

5. Functionalism in language teaching
6. Methods and approaches in ELT

* the grammar translation method

*the audio-lingual method

* the reading method

*the eclectic approach

*the communicative approach

7. The language syllabus

*Structural syllabus

*situational syllabus

*functional syllabus

*discourse based syllabus

8. Levels of language description

* teaching pronunciation

*teaching vocabulary

*teaching grammar

9. Language skills

*teaching reading

*teaching writing

*teaching listening

*teaching speaking

 

Psycholinguistics

(4 Credit Hours)

Course Description

This course gives an overview on the discipline, covering areas such as speech perception, word recognition, lexical ambiguity, sentence comprehension, sentence production, language acquisition, and neurolinguistics. It focuses on how humans learn, represent, comprehend, and produce language; how language behavior helps us in figuring out the linguistic mental process and how properties of the mind and brain influence human language. It also addresses the nature of language, how it is used, how our language skills develop, and how they can be impaired.

Objectives

By the end of this course students will:

1-have a good understanding of both the research methodologies used in psycholinguistics and other interrelated fields.

2-be able to read, analyze and critique original psycholinguistics research articles.

 

Socio-linguistics 

(4 Credit Hours)

Course Description:

The introductory course explores the close link between language society. It covers the following topics:

• Diversity in language the society.
• Linguistic Geography
• Dialect differences
• Lingua Francas
• Pidgins and Creoles
• Styles , slang and Jargon
• The correlation of social patterns and linguistics data.
• Language variation and grammatical theory.

 

Research Methodology (Practice & Computer skills )

 (4 Credit Hours)

Course Description:

The second course in Research Methodology in the 7^th semester seeks to develop more deeply into the methods and procedures learned in relation to the branches of the faculty, and where ever to apply this aspect of research thought in the foundation course in semester six. Thus, while the foundation research methodology course represents the theoretical part, the practical part is divided into two sections. The first section is:

1. Survey research.
2. types of questionnaire items.
3. types of interviews.
4. Case study.
5. Classroom observation.
6. Error analysis.
7. Discourse or Text analysis.
8. Corpus Linguistics.

The second part of the practical course is to provide students with the basic computer skills and data show presentation.

Language Testing

 (4 Credit Hours)

 

Course objectives:

The aim of this course is to provide the students with basic information about testing English as a foreign language. By the end of the course students should be able to understand how to construct and evaluate and mark a   language test .

Assessment:

• What is a language Test?
• Reasons and types of test. Placement, Achievement, Diagnostic and Proficiency.
• Planning & Designing the test:
• Qualities of a good test.
• Test Specifications.
• Placement Tests.
• Teaching and Testing cycles.
• Achievement tests.
• Testing language components (grammar , vocabulary ).
• Testing Reading &Listening.
• Testing Speaking & Writing.

Research Project

 (3 credit hours)

 

Course description

Students have to write a research paper as part of their graduation requirements in the field of applied linguistics, literature, language teaching, or translation. They apply technical aspects of research writing that had already been studied in the research methodology course.

Pragmatics

(4 credit hours)

Course description

Function of language

Interaction functions of language and pragmatic effects

Pragmatic issues in spoken and written language

Observing and flouting maxims

Conventional implicature

Culture and stereotypes

Research in folk knowledge systems

Speech act theory and types of speech act

Facility conditions of speech act

Interface of pragmatics

Pragmatics and cognition

Advanced Topics in Linguistics

 (3 credit hours)

 

Course description

Language change

Categories of deixis

History of old linguistics and modern linguistics

Morphology and etymology

Theoretical and practical issues of pragmatics

Theoretical and practical issues of semantics

Linguistic research and language variation

Discourse analysis and conversation analysis

Assessment:

 

The assessment of target language skills can be made up of a range of tests and assignments designed to demonstrate, as appropriate:

• Grammar tests.
• Oral presentation.
• Listening comprehension.
• Essay and projects written in the target language.
• Reading tests.
• Formal unseen examination of various kinds.
• Course work including evaluation of English teaching textbooks and applying the ELT recent methodology in the teaching contexts of the students by preparing lesson plans for teaching language components and skills.