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 2025/5/26

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.

 

Your linguistics research presentations will be 20 minutes (+ 20 minutes discussion). The slides or handout must be in English, but you can speak/sign whatever language you prefer. Post your presentation file in the E-Course system by 12 noon of your presentation day so everybody can get a copy. The goal is just to practice giving a talk, so it’s OK if it’s not new research. I will grade based on the academic style and logic, not on the content.

 

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.

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
吳秋南

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
張慧誼

3/18

Language and cognition

Devitt (2006)

Phillips et al. (2021)

楊惠如
蔡邦佑

3/25

Universals and innateness

Lidz & Gagliardi (2015)
Schembri et al. (2018)

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

Gries & Berez (2017)

Awati (2015)

潘信宏

Myers

4/22

Experimental linguistics

Almaatouq et al. (2024a,b)

Rogers & Révész (2019)

楊惠如
蔡邦佑

4/29*

Statistical linguistics
+ corpus exercise due

+ get statistics exercise

Good (2005, chs. 1-4)

Myers

5/6

AI linguistics

Pater (2019)

Posit (2025)

麥慶賓

Myers

5/13*

Your choice I
+ statistics exercise due

Schembri et al. (2013)

Lin & Chang (2011)

Widodo (2017)

潘信宏

吳秋南

Hastowohadi

5/20

Your choice II

Gries (2015)

Choi (2021)

Tang & Yang (2007)

楊惠如

蔡邦佑

張慧誼

5/27

Your choice III

Talmy (2000)

Bragg et al. (2019)

鄧又睿

麥慶賓

6/3*

Presentations I

 

潘信宏

吳秋南

鄧又睿

哈斯托 (Hasto)

6/10*

Presentations II [last class]

 

楊惠如

蔡邦佑

張慧誼

麥慶賓

6/17*

Journal acknowledgment due

 

 

 

 

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]

Bragg, D., Koller, O., Bellard, M., Berke, L., Boudreault, P., Braffort, A., ... & Ringel Morris, M. (2019, October). Sign language recognition, generation, and translation: An interdisciplinary perspective. In Proceedings of the 21st international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers and accessibility (pp. 16-31).

Cardona, G. (1994). Indian linguistics. In G. Lepschy (Ed.), History of linguistics: Volume I: The Eastern traditions of linguistics (pp. 25-60). London: Longman.

Choi, H. (2021). Anglicisms in Korean: A diachronic corpus-based study with special reference to translation as a mode of language contact. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 17(1), 115-138.

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. (2015). Some current quantitative problems in corpus linguistics and a sketch of some solutions. Language and Linguistics, 16(1), 93-117.

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.

Lidz, J., & Gagliardi, A. (2015). How nature meets nurture: Universal grammar and statistical learning. Annual Review of Linguistics, 1(1), 333-353.

Lin, C.-H., & Chang, J.-H. (2011). Modality in Taiwan Sign Language. In W. Nakamura (Ed.) New perspectives in Role and Reference Grammar. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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.

Posit. (2025). Torch for R: Getting started. https://torch.mlverse.org/start/ [Accessed 2025/3/23]

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.

Schembri, A., Fenlon, J., Rentelis, R., Reynolds, S., & Cormier, K. (2013). Building the British Sign Language corpus. Language Documentation & Conservations, 7, 136-154.

Talmy, L. (2000). A typology of event integration [selections]. In Toward a cognitive semantics, volume II: Typology and process in concept structuring (pp. 213-288). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Tang, G., & Yang, G. (2007). Events of motion and causation in Hong Kong Sign Language. Lingua, 117(7), 1216-1257.

Wang, W. S. (1989). Language in China: A chapter in the history of linguistics. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 17(2), 183-222.

Widodo, H. P. (2017). Constructing and negotiating agency and identity of English language learners: Teacher-learner driven ESP materials development in the Indonesian secondary school context. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 14(2), 233-249.