Dear all,
There is going to be an exam question this weekend, due Monday as usual. After that:

To prepare for week 8, please

1. finish reading the text on Syntax
2. watch these two videos
   • Syntax III
   • Syntax IV
3. and do the homework in the Dropbox.

The discussion board will, of course, remain open over Christmas and New Year’s…
See you next year!

Dear all,

To prepare for week 7, please

1. read this introductiory chapter on syntax (unpublished) up to page 23
2. watch these two videos
   • Syntax I: Phrase structure and word classes
   • Syntax II: Clause structure and syntactic relations and
3. do the homework in the Dropbox.

There will be breakout sessions from 10:15 to 10:45, please be on time. We’ll meet all together at 10:45.

Dear all,

The next week will be about morphology again, there is no new reading. (But some of you said they were overwhelmed by too much new terminology, so do look at the text again and use the forum to clarify any points of doubt.)

Next videos:
Morphology IV: Inflection and Derivation
Morpology V: Word Formation

There’s no new homework, either. Please go through the exercises for week 5 again and make a note of what you’d like to discuss in more detail.

We are going to begin with breakout-sessions on the homework next week. If you would like to discuss the homework in small groups, please join our live-chat punctually at 10:15 so that I can team you up. You are also free to work in the forum instead, however. In that case, join us at 10:45 as usual.

Dear all,

In preparation for week 5, please

1. read Bieswanger & Becker 2017: chapter 4 (pp. 75-95)
2. watch the following videos
   • (Phonology to) Morphology I
   • (Phonology to) Morphology II
   • (Phonology to) Morphology III
3. and do the homework (PDF in the Dropbox). There are many recap questions this time, because my colleagues and I changed the content around between this week and next quite a bit and I lost track somewhere. Sorry about that! If you don’t have time for everything, pick those tasks that look interesting to you!

There’s impulses for discussion in the forum as well — please make at least one post somewhere in the course of the week!

Dear all,

In preparation for week 4, please

1. read Bieswanger & Becker 2017: section 3.3 (pp. 58-73)
2. watch the following videos
   • Phonology I
   • Phonology II
   • Phonology III
3. and do the homework (PDF in the Dropbox).

If you like, discuss the homework here as well: https://blogs.fu-berlin.de/linguistics/forums/topic/creative-spelling/

Just to clarify: What you see on BB is your score, not a grade. Each question is worth three points, so if you see “3.00”, you’ve submitted a very good answer, if you see “1.00”, you got only one point out of three.

Please allow one or two weeks for evaluation. We’ll try to be faster, but we can’t make any promises.

Dear all,

In preparation for week 3, please

1. read Bieswanger & Becker 2017: section 3.1 (pp. 50-58)
2. watch the following video
   • Phonetics
3. and do the homework (PDF in the Dropbox).

If you want to read more, read Plag et al. 2009: 29-54.

Everyone enrolled for the lecture on BB should have access to this video. Please let me know if not!

Dear all,

Thanks for today, we had a very stimulating discussion I think. I’m looking forward to next week’s session.

In preparation, please

1. read Bieswanger & Becker 2017: section 3.1 (pp. 39-50)
2. watch the following videos
   • IPA, speech organs, consonants
   • Vowels
   • Introduction to articulatory phonetics
3. and do the homework (PDF in the Dropbox).

To access the online content of the library, which is exclusive to FU members, you’ll need a virtual private network (vpn) connection to pretend that you’re on campus. Zedat has instructions at https://www.zedat.fu-berlin.de/VPN.

Welcome new and returning students!

Great that you decided to study linguistics with us! I’m looking forward to meeting you online next week and, hopefully, in person next year. Here’s some information on the module, my seminars and the the first sessions.

Course description

This module offers an introduction to the basic concepts and methods of linguistics on various levels of analysis (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and text linguistics). In the end, you will be able to understand the language of linguistics and pursue further studies in the discipline.

Syllabus, Bibliography, Homework

I have prepared a few documents for you and exported them to a folder in my Dropbox. At the moment, this folder contains:

• A document with some general information on the course, the expectable workload, etc.
• The course syllabus. The syllabus tells you what we are planning to do each week and what you should do to prepare for each session. There will be texts to read and videos to watch.
• The course bibliography. The bibliography explains the text citations used on the syllabus (and in the videos) and contains all necessary bibliographical information on the texts you are to read.

I will also add

• Documents for each week’s homework tasks.

Links to the videos for each week will follow. Here’s a short (<2min) video that shows you how to find the main textbook. (I’ve set the video to “public” since some of you were apparently unable to watch it. You’ll need to allow your browser to accept cookies from https://fu-berlin.eu.vbrickrev.com.)

Live sessions

My seminars will take place via WebEx at their allotted times. My personal “room” can be found at https://fu-berlin.webex.com/meet/kirsten.middeke. If you go there at the right time, you sould automatically enter our meeting once I start it. But there are also direct links for each seminar:

• 17310 Tuesdays 10-12
• 17339 Fridays 10-12

General information on Webex and how to use it can be found here: https://fu-berlin.webex.com/webappng/sites/fu-berlin/dashboard?siteurl=fu-berlin. Please send me an e-mail should you experience any technical problems.

See you all next week!
Kirsten