The
Theoretical and Empirical Basis of Linguistics
語言學的理論與實證基礎
Spring
2025
Tuesday
14:10-17:00
文學院306
課碼: 1309005
UPDATED 2025/2/27
Research
& Writing links
Old related classes:
Theoretical and Empirical Basis of Linguistics: 2020,
2022
Foundations of Linguistic Theory: 2011,
2013,
2015,
2017
Empirical Methods in Linguistics: 2005,
2007,
2009
Methods of Linguistic Data Collection: 2016
James Myers (麥傑)
Office: 文學院 (Humanities) Room 247
Tel: 31506
WWW: https://lngmyers.ccu.edu.tw/
Office hours: Thursday 10 am -12 noon, or by appointment (made at least 24
hours ahead)
Goals
You have already had experience with linguistic theory and analysis. Now we’ll put this experience into philosophical and historical context, and sample some of the many and varied empirical methods underlying these theories and analyses.
Evaluation
30% Participation (being actively involved in the discussions)
20% Discussion leading (one or more leaders per week)
20% Exercises (practice using corpus analysis and statistics)
20% Presentation of your own research
10% Journal submission (editor’s receipt of manuscript; may differ from in-class presentation)
About the discussions
Every week we’ll read roughly 60 pages of English text. Discussion leaders should actively guide the discussion, using a handout of questions in English that encourage us to explore the ideas in the readings (upload your handout to the E-course system by 12 noon on the discussion day). Don’t lecture us: The more your questions encourage other people to express their thoughts, the better! Ideally, each reading should have its own discussion leader, but if the reading is very long, it can be split into two parts, with one leader for each. Each Ph.D. student has to lead the same number of discussions (MA students can lead fewer, if we can’t divide up the readings perfectly). Each week has a theme, so the discussion leaders should be aware of that week’s other reading(s), and include discussion questions about it/them if relevant. Even better, try to think of ways to link the current week’s theme with themes from earlier weeks. During the two weeks with exercises, the readings will include tutorials, which I will lead.
AI note: You are welcome to use AI tools like Google Translate to help understand the readings, but you CANNOT use ANY AI tool to write your discussion questions or to do the exercises. Doing so will count as plagiarism, since generative AI tools are intrinsically plagiarism machines. Also, of course, if you let a machine think for you, you just become its slave.
Discussion readings
Almaatouq, A., Griffiths, T. L., Suchow, J. W., Whiting, M. E., Evans, J., & Watts, D. J. (2024a). Beyond playing 20 questions with nature: Integrative experiment design in the social and behavioral sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 47, e33.
Almaatouq, A., Griffiths, T. L., Suchow, J., Whiting, M. E., Evans, J., & Watts, D. J. (2024b). Replies to commentaries on beyond playing 20 questions with nature. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 47, e65.
Awati, K. (2015). A gentle introduction to text mining using R. https://eight2late.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/a-gentle-introduction-to-text-mining-using-r/ [Accessed 2024/12/27]
Cardona, G. (1994). Indian linguistics. In G. Lepschy (Ed.), History of linguistics: Volume I: The Eastern traditions of linguistics (pp. 25-60). London: Longman.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chapter 1: Methodological preliminaries (pp. 3-62).
Daly, N. P. (2023). Why learn languages in AI age? Taipei Times, May 28, p. 8. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/05/28/2003800537
Devitt, M. (2006). Intuitions in linguistics. British Journal of Philosophy of Science, 57, 481-513.
Eckert, P. (2013). Ethics in linguistic research. In Podesva, R. J., & Sharma, D. (Eds.) Research methods in linguistics (pp. 11-26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Good, P. I. (2005). Introduction to statistics through resampling methods and R/S-Plus. [chapters 1-4] Wiley.
Gries, S. Th., & Berez, A. L. (2017). Linguistic annotation in/for corpus linguistics. In N. Ide and J. Pustejovsky (Eds.), Handbook of linguistic annotation (pp. 379-409). Springer.
Hovdhaugen, E. (1982). Foundations of Western Linguistics: From the beginning to the end of the first millennium A.D. [ch. 3]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget A/S.
Kjell, O., Giorgi, S., & Schwartz, H. A. (2023). The text-package: An R-package for analyzing and visualizing human language using natural language processing and transformers. Psychological Methods, 28(6), 1478-1498.
Lidz, J., & Gagliardi, A. (2015). How nature meets nurture: Universal grammar and statistical learning. Annual Review of Linguistics, 1(1), 333-353.
Pater, J. (2019). Generative linguistics and neural networks at 60: Foundation, friction, and fusion. Language, 95(1), e41-e74.
Phillips, C., Gaston, P., Huang, N., & Muller, H. (2021). Theories all the way down: Remarks on “theoretical” and “experimental” linguistics. In G. Goodall (Ed.) The Cambridge handbook of experimental syntax (pp. 587-616). Cambridge University Press.
Quer, J., & Steinbach, M. (2019). Handling sign language data: The impact of modality. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, Article 483.
Rogers, J., & Révész, A. (2019). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs In J. McKinley & H. Rose (Eds.) The Routledge handbook of research methods in applied linguistics (pp. 133-143). Routledge.
Rowe, J. H. (1974). Sixteenth and seventeenth century grammars. In D. Hymes (Ed.) Studies in the history of linguistics: Traditions and paradigms (pp. 361-379). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Schembri, A., Fenlon, J., Cormier, K., & Johnston, T. (2018). Sociolinguistic typology and sign languages. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 200.
Wang, W. S. (1989). Language in China: A chapter in the history of linguistics. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 17(2), 183-222.
Schedule
Readings must be done prior to class.
* Marks deadlines
|
Week |
Topic/exercises |
Readings |
Leader |
|
2/18 |
Does the world need linguists? |
Daly (2023) |
Myers |
|
2/25 |
Early non-Western linguistics |
Cardona (1994) Wang (1989) |
Hastowohadi |
|
3/4 |
Early Western linguistics |
Hovdhaugen (1982, ch. 3) Rowe (1974) |
Hastowohadi 鄧又睿 |
|
3/11 |
20th century Western linguistics |
Chomsky (1965) |
麥慶賓 |
|
3/18 |
Language and cognition |
Devitt (2006) Phillips et al. (2021) |
楊惠如 |
|
3/25 |
Universals and innateness |
Lidz
& Gagliardi (2015) |
鄧又睿 吳秋南 |
|
4/1 |
Linguistic fieldwork |
Eckert (2013) Quer & Steinbach (2019) |
潘信宏 張慧誼 |
|
4/8 |
NO CLASS [校際活動] |
|
|
|
4/15 |
Corpus linguistics + get corpus exercise |
Awati
(2015) |
Myers |
|
4/22 |
Experimental linguistics |
Almaatouq et al. (2024a,b) Rogers & Révész (2019) |
楊惠如 |
|
4/29* |
Statistical
linguistics + get statistics exercise |
Good (2005, chs. 1-4) |
Myers |
|
5/6 |
AI linguistics |
Kjell et
al. (2023) |
Myers |
|
5/13* |
Your
choice I |
TBA |
TBA |
|
5/20 |
Your choice II |
TBA |
TBA |
|
5/27 |
Your choice III |
TBA |
TBA |
|
6/3* |
Presentations I |
|
|
|
6/10* |
Presentations II [last class] |
|
|
|
6/17* |
Journal acknowledgment due |
|
|