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DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS SAMPLE 3-YEAR COURSE PLAN FOR THE INDEPENDENT STUDY (IS)

Semester 1: August – December

• AL603 Phonology (Required core course) [3 credits]

• AL605 Grammar (Required core course) [3 credits]

• AL608 Sociolinguistics (Required core course) [3 credits]

Semester 2: January – May

• AL704 Field Methods in Linguistics (Required Research Methods Elective) [4 credits]

• AL706 Linguistic Data Management (Required Research Methods Elective) [2 credits]

• Free Elective

Summer Semester: July

• AL732 Principles of Literacy (Elective course #3) [3 credits]

Semester 3: August – December

• Free Elective

• Free Elective

• Free Elective

Semester 4: January – May

• AL797 Independent Study [6 credits] or AL799 Thesis [12 credits]: Defend Proposal 

• AL755 Academic Writing for Linguistics or Free Elective (Recommended for everyone) [3 credits]

• Pass Ethics Review for Research and Collect Data

Semester 5: August – December

• AL797 or AL799 continued: Analyze Data and Write an Independent Study or Thesis

• Independent Study Oral Comprehensive Exam 

Semester 6: January – May

• AL797 or AL799 continued: Defend Independent Study/Thesis

ELECTIVE COURSES THAT FOCUS ON DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS:

• AL703 Linguistic Description (Prerequisites: AL603, AL605)

• AL710 Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Prerequisites: AL603, AL605)

• AL712 Advanced Grammatical Analysis (Prerequisite: AL605)

• AL713 Pragmatics (Prerequisite: AL605)

• AL715 Seminar on Linguistic Typology (Prerequisites: AL603, AL605)

• AL720 Discourse Analysis (Prerequisite: AL605)

• AL730 Lexicography 

• AL740 Phonetics for Field Linguists

• AL744 Advanced Phonology (Prerequisite: AL603)

• AL750 Selected Topics in Linguistics

• AL751 Current Issues in Linguistics

• AL752 Directed Readings

• AL753 Linguistic Applications

• AL755 Academic Writing for Linguistics

NOTE:  The above courses may not all be offered during a student’s study at Payap University.  However, there are many elective courses in addition to these courses about Translation and Language Development.

 Flowchart Available 

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Core Courses:

• AL603 Phonological Analysis [3 credits]. Study the principles and methods of analyzing linguistic sound systems.

• AL605 Grammatical Analysis [3 credits]. Study the principles and methods of analyzing grammatical structures.

• AL608 Sociolinguistics [3 credits]. Study of the structure and use of language in its social and cultural contexts with a focus on multilingual situations.

Required Research Methods Electives:

• AL704 Field Methods in Linguistics (Prerequisites: AL603, AL605) [4 credits]. Methods for collecting and analyzing language data to formulate hypotheses and then refine them in light of available data.

• AL706 Linguistic Data Management (Prerequisites: AL603, AL605) [2 credits]. Methods for managing, organizing, and presenting language data using computational tools. 

Selected Descriptive Linguistics Free Electives:

• AL715 Seminar on Linguistic Typology (Prerequisites: AL603, AL605) [3 credits]. Seminar on Mainland Southeast Asia as an area of linguistic convergence. This course explores linguistic structures of Mainland Southeast Asian languages from a typological perspective, i.e., language universals and the scope of variation in the linguistic structures found in the world’s languages.

• AL720 Discourse Analysis (Prerequisite: AL605) [3 credits]. Linguistic analysis of the discourse features, including coherence, discontinuities, information structure, prominence, pragmatic connectives, participant reference, and other topics.

• AL746 Semantics (Prerequisites: none) [3 credits]. The relationship between form and meaning at various levels of language.

• AL710 Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Prerequisites: AL603, AL605) [3 credits]. The theoretical analysis of language change and methods for linguistic reconstruction with a focus on Asian languages.

• AL755 Academic Writing for Linguistics (Prerequisites: none) [3 credits]. Seminar on how to write formal written research proposals, abstracts, journal articles, academic conference presentations, and more extensive written works (i.e., M.A. theses and Independent Study Research Papers).