| MODULE TITLE |
MODULE ID |
SEMESTER |
ADVANCED SYNTACTIC THEORY
Aims
The course should provide students with practice in addressing recent literature in syntax and the syntax-semantics interface, leading to the possibility of contributing to that literature. |
LI7870 |
2 |
AN GHAEILGE MAR MHEÁN TEAGAISC [IRISH AS A MEDUIM OF INSTRUCTION]
Aims:
This module, which is delivered through the medium of Irish, has three key aims: (i) to enable students to communicate in their subject area through the medium of Irish in a classroom or other context. This will be achieved through autonomous language learning where students reflect upon their own language use; through their planning for situations in which Irish will be used; through monitoring and assessing their own Irish-language proficiency and being pro-active in their language learning; (ii) to familiarise students with resources and technology that can be used for the implementation of subject specific Irish-medium instruction and (iii) to explore in theory and practice the key pedagogical concepts related to target language use, language immersion, and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).
|
LI7894 |
1 |
BILINGUALISM AND THE MAINTENANCE OF IRISH
Aims:
Note: Students do not need to be able to speak Irish to take this module. The module uses the Irish language in Ireland as a case study through which to explore bilingualism and the maintenance of minority languages.
This module has four aims: (i) to introduce key concepts and theories in bilingualism (2) to examine bilingualism and language maintenance in Ireland in a historical and a comparative context, making reference to other minority language situations; (3) to critically evaluate successes and failures in national efforts to revitalise Irish; and (4) to assess the contribution of the education system to the intergenerational transmission of the language.
The course is intended as an introduction to psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic research for students who are considering research either on bilingualism or on the Irish language. |
LI7866 |
2 |
CHINESE LANGUAGE AND WRITING
Module Content:
This module introduces students to the Chinese language including its writing systems, from various linguistic/applied linguistic perspectives and from both language-internal/external viewpoints. It aims to familiarise students to aspects of the history of Chinese language and its building blocks (sound system, word formation, syntax and meaning), as well as social and functional aspects. The evolution, development and transformation of the Chinese writing system are explored as part of this, including essential features of the Chinese characters and principles underlying their construction. Students are introduced to different varieties of Chinese and factors leading to language and standardisation. Important issues of high relevance such as culture are addressed in the module. |
LI7003 |
? |
CHINESE DIASPORA AND LANGUAGE IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT
Module Content:
This module locates the Chinese diaspora and language in a global perspective. It explores the nature of Chinese varieties as world languages including Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien. It also outlines the origins and development of Chinese varieties outside China within the context of social, historical, and linguistic framework. The module addresses the development of Chinese as a Heritage Language, and the international growth in interest in Chinese as a Foreign Language. |
LI7889 |
? |
CHINA IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Module Content:
This module approaches China as a civilisation in comparison with the ways of life cultivated in the West over the last 3000 years or so. This depth in time helps to keep present-day developments in perspective. Tracking a whole way of life requires taking into account diverse concerns that are commonly treated as the preserves of distinct academic disciplines. Here the focus brings together specific comparative perspectives on education, on families, on governance systems, on economic and ecological attitudes, on human nature and psychology, and finally on values and world views. Students will be expected to apply the approaches they have already learned and to draw on their Study Abroad experiences in making connections between these various domains in both China and the West. The goal is a richer and possibly a more complicated perspective on ways of life that have endured and grown for millennia |
LI8001 |
? |
COMPUTATIONAL THEORIES OF GRAMMAR AND MEANING
Aims:
The module presents computational linguistics as a cognitive science, with focus on formal syntax, formal semantics and computational morphology. The module aims to (i) develop participants' abilities to describe natural language phenomena with computationally oriented grammars that model natural language parsing, generation, and construction of semantic representation in a deductive logical setting; (ii) apply the tools of formal language theory to analysing the syntactic complexity of human languages in its syntax and morphology with reference to ramifications for human language processing; (iii) develop skill in grammar development for extensive fragments of natural language encompassing important
syntactic domains: complex noun phrase structure, relative clauses, arguments and adjuncts, embedding verbs, topic-focus constructions and questions. |
LI7873 |
2 |
COMPUTER-ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING
Aims:
This module combines both theory and practice and sets out to equip students with practical experience and skills as well as a theoretical understanding of how to design, implement and evaluate Computer-Assisted Language Learning applications. The emphasis throughout is on encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration among the students and on project-based group learning. The principal focus is on CALL development for Irish language instruction but content development for other languages is also possible. Specific aims are to: (i) enable students from different (technical, pedagogical and linguistic) backgrounds to develop their skills as well as a broad understanding of CALL as an interdisciplinary field, (ii) to familiarise students with some pedagogical considerations and second language acquisition theory that should ideally guide the development of CALL, (iii) familiarise students with a range of speech and language technologies that can be deployed in CALL (iv) provide students with practical skills in the design/development of CALL content, (v) provide students with practical skills in the implementation of CALL content, (vi) provide students with practical skills in the evaluation of CALL content and (vii) give students, where possible, hands on experience of working as part of a multidisciplinary team in order to create their own prototype digital materials |
LI7895 |
2 |
CORPORA IN SPEECH AND LANGUAGE PROCESSING
Aims:
Corpora are used in machine learning, in the development and testing of speech and language processing tools, and the development of linguistic knowledge bases. Corpora also provide empirical evidence for linguistic research (in morphology, phonology, syntax, pragmatics, stylistics, etc.), and are widely used in language acquisition studies (L1 and L2), and in sociolinguistic and historical studies.
This module aims to introduce students to the principles of corpus design, collection, pre- processing and annotation. It will enable students to gain experience of using various types of corpora, and data processing software. It also aims to familiarise students with current research literature in the field.
|
LIP12005 |
2 |
CORPUS LINGUISTICS
Aims:
A corpus consists of a large body of language samples (written / spoken / signed / gestural) which are held electronically in text, audio and/or video form. Corpora can be used to provide evidence for linguistic research (in syntax, morphology, stylistics, pragmatics etc.); they can be used in historical and sociolinguistic studies; they can be used to generate authentic language teaching materials and language testing materials; and they are used in the generation and testing of speech and language processing tools.
This module will introduce students to the principles of corpus creation (i.e. design, collection, and annotation), and students will gain experience of using various types of corpora, corpus query tools, and corpus annotation tools. |
LI7864 |
1 |
DESCRIBING ENGLISH GRAMMAR
Aims:
This module has four principal aims: (i) to examine the major syntactic and morphological features of English, using insights from more general linguistic theory and from corpus-based approaches to language, (ii) to understand the principles that account for grammatical variation across the different national varieties, styles, and registers that characterize English, (iii) to develop a critical perspective on the question of what constitutes English grammar, and (iv) to understand the basis of comparing English grammar with the grammars of other languages. |
LI7878 |
1 |
DESCRIBING GRAMMAR
Aims:
The module's main aims are (i) to introduce students to the basic concepts of grammatical description, focusing on syntactic description; (ii) to familiarize students with the basic features of sentence structure: syntactic categories, constituency, and dependency; (iii) to give students experience of the practical description of the grammatical structures of languages; and (iv) to familiarize students with the tasks of formulating and evaluating syntactic argumentation.
|
LI7856 |
1 |
DESCRIBING MEANING
Aims:
The course’s main aims are (i) to introduce students to the basic challenges facing the linguist seeking to analyse meaning communicated through language; (ii) to familiarize students with some leading representational and denotational approaches to semantics; and (iii) to give students experience of the practical description of the semantic structures of languages. |
LI7869 |
2 |
DESCRIBING THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGES
Aims:
This module aims to provide students with a (i) a thorough understanding of how speech sounds are produced, (ii) of the systems used to describe, classify and transcribe them, (iii) an understanding of the principles of phonemic analysis, and (iv) a basic training in simple phonemic analysis and in broad and narrow transcription. Illustrative and exercise materials are drawn from a wide variety of languages. In addition to formal lectures there are scheduled practical ear training and transcription tutorials. |
LI7868 |
1 |
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING PRACTICE 1
Aims:
This module has four aims: (i) to explore the practical implications of language learning theory in classroom practices today; (ii) to deepen students’ understanding of the pedagogical implementation of second language curricula in existing classrooms; (iii) to provide students with opportunity to observe and reflect on real teaching practices, lesson plans, teaching materials, and assessment methods; and (iv) to provide students with a supported opportunity to teach in a real language classroom. The module is designed to have students both observe real teaching practices, and reflect critically on these observations. The module aims to provide a solid foundation of knowledge and skills necessary to engage in future language teaching. |
LI7884 |
1 |
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING PRACTICE 2
Aims:
This module has four aims: (i) to explore the practical implications of language learning theory in classroom practices today; (ii) to deepen students’ understanding of the pedagogical implementation of second language curricula in existing classrooms; (iii) to provide students with the opportunity to observe and reflect on real teaching practices, lesson plans, teaching materials, and assessment methods; and (iv) to provide students with a supported opportunity to teach in a real language classroom. The module is designed to have students both observe real teaching practices, and reflect critically on these observations. The module aims to provide a solid foundation of knowledge and skills necessary to engage in future language teaching.
|
LI7885 |
2 |
EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF SOUND SYSTEMS
This laboratory-based module introduces students to the empirical analysis of spoken language, attending to the theoretical aspects while developing practical analytic skills. It is organised in terms of a series of topics, illuminating specific dimensions of the sound structures of languages. For each topic introduced, analytic tasks are undertaken that allow students to explore the phonetic realisation of phonological contrast. Throughout, consideration is given to languages’ diversity in exploiting the dimensions of potential contrast, and to the production/perception constraints that shape sound systems and tend to trigger sound change. The module deals primarily with the segmental structure of languages, though essential aspects of prosodic structure are dealt with briefly. |
LIP12003 |
2 |
FORMAL FOUNDATIONS OF LINGUISTIC THEORIES
Aims:
The course is designed to establish competence in foundational mathematical concepts used in contemporary cognitive science and computationally-oriented approaches to linguistic theory. Basic concepts of discrete mathematics are reviewed with attention to their relevance in linguistics: sets, operators, relations, trees, logic, formal language theory. Emphasis is placed on finite recursive specification of infinite formal languages as an idealization of grammar specification for natural languages (each of which is thought to be infinite but managed by finite brains). Natural languages are modelled as uninterpreted sets of grammatical sentences whose internal structural complexity has implications related to constraints on human syntactic processing. Human languages are also modelled via their translation into logical languages supplied with deductive mechanisms supplying representational and denotational semantic analysis. Logical languages within a range of expressivity classes are considered in terms of their syntax, semantics, and inference mechanisms as simulations of human recognition, interpretation, and reasoning with natural language expressions. Thus, the aims of the course are to (i) establish competence with the core concepts and analytical tools, (ii) develop awareness of the range of applicability of the tools and concepts within linguistic theory and cognitive science, (iii) foster confident and fluent use of formal methods in analysing human language and reasoning. |
LI7872 |
1 |
LABORATORY PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
Aims:
This course introduces students to the laboratory investigation of the segmental and prosodic systems of languages. It provides a practical training in specific analytic techniques: although the primary focus is on acoustic analysis methods, students are also introduced to other analysis techniques, which involve articulatory and (time permitting) aerodynamic data.
The course focusses on a series of experimental tasks associated with key aspects of linguistic structure, in order to provide an understanding of (i) the primary phonetic dimensions of speech generation, (ii) how these phonetic dimensions are exploited in the sound systems of different languages, and (iii) the interactions of phonetic and phonological factors in determining the sound systems of languages. |
LI7867 |
2 |
LANGUAGE and GESTURE
Aims:
This module looks at current thought and theory regarding the role of gesture from an evolutionary perspective, as pragmatic, semantic and grammatical units, as co-speech elements, and in signed language, and presents a view of language as multimodal, embodied, and as a perspectivized, experiential activity. In doing so, this module offers an option that takes account of multimodality, and provides the opportunity to build on the School’s expertise in spoken and signed language. |
LIP12002 |
2 |
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Aims:
The general aim of this module is to introduce students to the known facts, the principal theoretical issues and the current areas of debate relative to language acquisition. The module will include within its purview child language development involving a single language, the acquisition in childhood of two or more languages, and the learning of additional languages later in life. As well as examining the above acquisitional phenomena themselves, the module will outline the research methodologies deployed in their investigation. |
LI7857 |
2 |
LANGUAGE TESTING
Aims:
This module has two aims: (i) to familiarize students with fundamental principles in language testing, and (ii) to apply those principles to the design of language tests, scoring/rating schemes, and validation procedures. Particular importance is attached to the development of students’ practical ability to design valid and reliable tests. |
LI7859 |
2 |
LANGUAGE VARIATION AND CHANGE
Aims:
This module has three main aims: (i) to examine the principles of language change, including both internally- and externally-motivated change, (ii) to understand language change in relation to linguistic variation, and (iii) to explore the insights arising from different methods in studying language variation. Assignments encourage students to gain first-hand experience in the observation of language variation. |
LI7861 |
1 |
LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPES
Aims:
This module has three principal aims:
(i) to give an overview of the emergent field of 'linguistic landscapes', described succinctly as 'text presented and displayed in the public space' (Shohamy and Waksman 2009: 314)
(ii) to facilitate students in practical aspects of first-hand linguistic landscape research
(iii) to provide an opportunity for critical reflection on linguistic landscapes in the light of language policy, multilingualism, globalisation, tourism, and practices of literacy in old and new media.
| LI7896 |
1 |
LINGUISTIC PRAGMATICS
Aims:
The module’s main aims are (i) to introduce students to inferential theories of pragmatics; (ii) to familiarize students with Relevance Theory in particular; and (iii) to give students experience of the practical description of conversational data. |
LI7862 |
2 |
LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY
Aims:
The module’s mains aims are (i) to introduce students to the study of the structural similarities and differences between the languages of the world; (ii) to familiarize students with the principles of research in linguistic typology, including how representative language samples are established; (iii) to give students experience of the practical analysis of cross-linguistic patterns that are found in phonology, morphology and syntax; and (iv) to familiarize students with the tasks of formulating and evaluating typological argumentation. |
LI7843 |
2 |
MULTILINGUALISM
Aims:
The goal of this module is to introduce students to ideas and concepts of multilingualism, and to examine situations where three or more languages are present in an individual’s language repertoire or speech community. This module takes as its point of departure multilingual individuals (children and adults) and their social context. It has three key themes: (1) to explore concepts and theories in multilingual individuals, communities and societies, (2) to introduce cognitive and acquisitional aspects of multilingualism; and (3) to assess critically successes and failures in policies to encourage multilingual language learning and use, particularly in education. The module is intended as an introduction to research for students who are considering research on multilingualism in individuals and societies. Whilst drawing on examples from across the world, the module nevertheless has a strong European flavour, with references to the work of the European Union and Council of Europe in language education policy, and case studies drawn from multilingualism in Europe. |
LI7883 |
1 |
PEDAGOGICAL GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH
Aims:
This module is concerned with the nature and development of L2 grammar, and with grammar as pedagogical content, with specific reference to English. The principal aims are to foster in students a critical awareness of a range of factors affecting the acquisition of L2 grammar, and to provide them with a basis for critically assessing a range of approaches to the teaching of grammar. |
LI7877 |
2 |
PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING
Aims:
This module explores factors that enable language learners and teachers to thrive individually and in their communities. Focus is placed on three distinct areas; theoretical considerations, empirical investigations and applied solutions. Key concepts and theories will be introduced relating to the psychology of language learning. Empirical data will highlight the challenges emerging from these contexts, and the applied element considers innovative ways to implement positive psychology in the classroom. |
LIP12008 |
2 |
| RESEARCH DISSERTATION |
LI7881 |
2 |
SECOND LANGUAGE CURRICULUM PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION
Aims:
This module has three aims: (i) to explore in theory and practice the key pedagogical concepts of learner-centredness and learner autonomy; (ii) to give students a thorough knowledge of learner-centred principles of second language curriculum design and their pedagogical implementation; and (iii) to familiarize students with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and the European Language Portfolio (ELP). The module is designed to challenge students to reflect critically on their own experience as language learners and their practice as language teachers |
LI7858 |
1 |
SPEECH AND LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION
Aims:
The aim of this module is to introduce students to how speech and language technology, as well as computational models of speech and language can be used in the teaching/learning of language. There will be a specific focus throughout on the Irish language and its particular context, but an in depth knowledge of the Irish language is unnecessary for participation. The focus is both theoretical and practical and the course emphasizes the multidisciplinary perspectives that are required for effective deployment of technology in education. Students are introduced to a range of speech and language technologies, some of which are currently in use for language instruction, and some of which, though ripe for educational deployment, are not yet in use. Learning theories and pedagogical methods are explored in terms of their implications for the development of technological applications in language teaching. The sociolinguistic context is a further major factor which is considered. The broader question of differences in the deployment of the technology in minority and major world languages are discussed. |
LI7897 |
2 |
SPEECH PROCESSING 1
Aims:
The aim of this module is to provide students with an in-depth knowledge of the basic properties of continuous and discrete signals, and of linear time-invariant (LTI) systems, as the basis for spectral analysis of speech signals. Through the theoretical framework of LTI systems, the source-filter model of speech production is explored as well as different types of speech analysis techniques, including the speech spectrograph. A further aim is to introduce students to key digital signal processing techniques for spectral analysis of speech signals, including the Discrete Fourier Transform, Cepstral analysis and Linear Predictive Coding.
|
LI7871 |
1 |
SPEECH PROCESSING 2: ACOUSTIC MODELLING
Aims:
The aim of this module is to provide students with an understanding of the acoustics of speech production and with knowledge about the signal analysis and processing techniques required to model the speech production process for the purpose of generating synthetic speech. |
LI7875 |
2 |
SPEECH PRODUCTION HEARING AND PERCEPTION
Aims:
This course aims to provide (i) an understanding of the whole process of speech communication, encompassing the speaker and the listener and (ii) an understanding of some of the major models of production, perception and hearing, and (iii) practical, hands-on, experience in conducting production and perception experiments. Central to the course is an understanding of the acoustic theory of speech production, and of the acoustic characteristics of speech sounds. Speech materials are analysed to illustrate the acoustic properties of speech, provide insight into to the underlying mechanisms of speech production, while also providing a basis for speech perception experimentation. The processes of hearing are dealt with along with the auditory transforms of the acoustic signal. Students are introduced to speech synthesis, and through synthesis based experimentation to the methods that may be used to explore the perceptual correlates of speech sounds. |
LI7874 |
1 |
TECHNOLOGY LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
Aims:
Participants in this module will explore how language and communication are mediated by various technologies, including that of writing. Students will be encouraged to reflect on the relationship between language, communication and technologies on one hand and individual language processing, interactional processes, and the nature of discourse on the other. Lectures, readings and discussions will range over historical, socio-cultural and individual-cognitive levels of analysis as appropriate. |
LI7860 |
2 |
