Firstbridge courses are offered to degree seeking freshmen and registration is done via webform in pre-arrival checklist.
Professor(s)
Notes
What is a language? How many languages are there in the world? How do we go about counting them? How are languages traced to language families? Is there one prehistoric proto-language from which all languages evolved? In this course, we will investigate the diversity of languages and language families around the world, the structural characteristics of these languages, and how languages change over time.
Benefiting from the FirstBridge link to the course “Struggles, Cultures, Identities, and Revolutions in the Modern Middle East”, this course will include an exploration of languages from the Middle East, both spoken and written, from antiquity to modern times. Finally, through collaborative projects, we will consider the issues of linguistic diversity and endangered languages.
Learning Outcomes
- Information Literacy: Students will comprehend how information is produced and valued in order to discover, evaluate, use, and create information and knowledge effectively and ethically. In FirstBridge, students will demonstrate the conversational nature of scholarship, and recognize their potential role and responsibilities as contributors to that conversation. For each discipline taught in FirstBridge, students will identify reference works, journals, databases and/or major works in history, in order to start effective research in the field (FB LO1)
- Life at University: Students will acquire the study skills, time management, and interpersonal skills needed to meet the demands of university-level academic work at a Liberal Arts College individually or as a team. Students will value the multiple meanings of place through experiential learning at AUP and beyond in the Parisian or global context (FB LO2)
- Describe language using tools from linguistics
- Demonstrate how a specific language has developed and changed over time
- Recognize and describe language diversity and relations between dominant and minority languages
- Local and Global Perspectives: Students will enhance their intercultural understanding of languages, cultures, and histories of local societies and the global issues to which these relate (CCI LO1)
- Aesthetic Inquiry and Creative Expression: Students will engage with artistic or creative objects (e.g., visual art, theatrical works, film) in different media and from a range of cultural traditions (CCI LO2)
- Civic and Ethical Engagement: Students will demonstrate awareness of ethical considerations relating to specific societal problems, values, or practices (historical or contemporary; global or local) and learn to articulate possible solutions to prominent challenges facing societies and institutions today so as to become engaged actors at various levels in our interconnected world (CCI LO4)
Syllabus
Book List
| Title | Author | Publisher | ISBN Number |
|---|---|---|---|
Languages of the World: An Introduction, 3rd edition | Asya Pereltsvaig | Cambridge University Press | 9781108748124 |
Schedule
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Tuesday | 13:45 | 15:05 | G-113 |
Friday | 13:45 | 15:05 | G-113 |