LINGUIST List 12.2478

Fri Oct 5 2001

Qs: Intro/Lang Text, Perfect Pitch/Lang Aquisition

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Richard Epstein, intro to Language course
2. Mona Spielmann, Perfect Pitch / Language aquisition

Dear Linguists,

In the spirit of Spring, Flynn et al. (2000, Language 76:110-122), next
semester I am planning to teach an Introduction to *Language* course for
the first time. The course is intended for an audience consisting mostly
of undergraduate English majors who know little or nothing about
Linguistics and who simply need to fulfill a requirement for graduation.
The vast majority will probably never take another Linguistics course. As
discussed in Spring, Flynn et al. (2000), I do not want this to be a
"baby" theoretical linguistics course, i.e. I want it to be different from
Introduction to *Linguistics*. At minimum, I would like the course to
include units in basic grammar, some history of English, sociolinguistics.

If anyone has already taught this sort of course, I wonder if you would be
willing to share any suggestions with me? For example, which topics do
you think ought to be covered? which ones should be excluded? How much
can realistically be covered in one single semester with this kind of
audience? If you have any sample syllabi, interesting assignments, or
textbook suggestions (other than the usual Intro to Ling texts, such as
Fromkin & Rodman, O'Grady et al., etc.), I would be especially grateful.

Of course, I'll be glad to post a summary if there's a lot of interest;
and I will be sure to thank (profusely) everyone who responds.

Thank you very much in advance,

Rich Epstein
Assistant Professor (Linguistics)
Dept. of English
Rutgers University, Camden

I am a university student in King's College London, UK currently trying to
write on the subject of perfect pitch and first language aquisition, but
have had little luck in finding information. I wanted to look into any
writing on the possibility that infants may posses perfect pitch in order to
aquire language, and any relating work in this direction, even if it isn't
exactly on this topic. I seem to have caught a hungry desire to learn as
much as possible about this subject, and would apreciate any pointers in the
right direction for finding out more information. Thank you,

Mona Spielmann
Kings College London
mona.spielmannkcl