This course is designed for research students in anthropology and other fieldwork-based disciplines in the social sciences who have little or no background in linguistics, but who expect to be doing long-term fieldwork in areas where the local languages are largely or entirely unwritten ones. It is a `learn-by-doing’ course, taught with assistance from a speaker of such a language. The course opens with an introduction to some basic linguistic concepts and methods, which the students then learn to apply to the task of language-learning through guided work with the language assistant. Students are introduced to techniques for the recording and transcription of spoken language, the use of specially designed software for text transcription and lexical data-base management, and to techniques for the training of field assistants to collaborate with them on these tasks.

Class participation (20%) Problem-solving exercises based on assigned reading (30%); 5000 word research paper based on work with the language assistant (50%).