LINGUIST List 9.401

Thu Mar 19 1998

Qs: Japanese,Dyslexia,Quebec French,Vowels

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Satoshi Stanley Koike, Query on teaching teachers of Japanese
2. Helene Ossipov, Q: Language and dyslexia
3. Anke Meyer, Search for Corpus in Quebec French
4. Eric J. Bakovic, Dominant-Recessive Harmony

 This is a query primarily for those of you who are interested in
teaching Japanese as a second language (TJSL) in Japan and teaching
Japanese as a foreign language (TJFL) elsewhere, although I'd also
like to hear from those of you who are interested in language teaching
in general. Here are my questions:

 (1) How many programs/departments are there in the world that train
(future) teachers of Japanese? How many programs/departments are
there that are specifically meant to train those who will teach
(future) teachers of Japanese? Where are the programs/departments?

 (2) What are exactly taught in these programs/departments? How many
of these programs/departments focus more on the theoretical (as
opposed to "practical") side of teaching Japanese? By the
"theoretical" side, I mean not only the "history," the "principles"
and the "goals" of TJSL/TJFL but also linguistic and/or educational
research in such areas as second language acquisition, classroom
interactions, inter-cultural communication and the impact of new
technologies in language teaching and learning, not to mention
adequate (explanatory or not) descriptions of the target language (L2,
Japanese in our case) as well as learners' native or primary languages
(L1s).

 (3) It appears that at least in the United States and in Japan, short
programs tend to focus on the practical side, teaching what kind of
teaching methods the teacher should use, what kind of classroom
activities should be done, etc., while longer programs, especially
degree programs, deal with a more theoretical side (see [2] above).
Is this a correct generalization? Is it true in other countries and
with regard to other languages? Or is the real situation much more
complicated than that?

 (4) Are there any programs/departments where practical problems that
teachers of language teachers and/or coordinators of language programs
must face are seriously addressed?

 I am particularly interested in the case of TJSL/TJFL, but I'd
also like to hear from those of you who know about teaching of other
languages, especially with regard to Question 4. Please reply
directly to me at skoikeemail.gc.cuny.edu. I would also like to know
about other newsgroups, etc. on the net where I can post this message.
Please feel free to forward this message to whoever might be
interested in the issues raised and/or can answer my questions. Thank
you very much.

					Truly,
					 S. S. Koike

The recent discussion on learning disabilities and linguistics courses
proved fodder for debate in our College Standards Committee. We also
are faced with students who ask to be released from the foreign
language requirement because of a learning disability. Before we even
consider their requests, students who claim an LD must be tested by,
and work closely with our excellent office for disabled students,
which provides additional time for test-taking, tutoring, and various
other supports for LD students. Generally, we on the standard
committee suggest an alternative language: for students who have
trouble with auditory processing, we suggest that they take ancient
Greek or Latin since conversation in that language is not usually
required; for those with dyslexia, we suggest American Sign Language.
Recently, a dyslexic student claimed that she couldnt handle ASL
because of the finger- spelling aspect of that language. So, here is
my question: because dyslexia is an inability to decode an alphabetic
writing system (I know this is a gross simplification of dyslexia),
would dyslexic students be able to do well in an ideographic system,
such as Chinese? Does anyone know of any research along these lines
or have any experience with this?

Dr. Helene Ossipov
Associate Professor of French
Dept.of Languages and Literatures
Box 870202
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-0202
Phone: (602) 965-7670
Fax: (602) 965-0135

I am writing my theses about interrogative sentences in Quebec
French. My special interest are the differences between the syntactic
structure of inerrogatives in Standard French and in Quebec
French. That's why I am looking for data about Quebec French as well
as literature treading this subject.


Thanks for helping me

greetings 
Anke Meyer

Dear LINGUIST Listers,

I'm interested in dominant-recessive vowel harmony systems; that is,
ones in which the presence of a member of a one class of vowels (the
"dominant" class) anywhere in the word requires that all other vowels
in the word be members of that class.

A more-or-less familiar example is Nez Perce, in which the dominant
class is /i,a,o/ and the recessive class is /i,ae,u/. If a morpheme
anywhere in the word has a dominant vowel, all other vowels become
dominant (ae --> a, u --> o). References include Aoki 1966
(Language), Chomsky & Halle 1968 (SPE), and Hall & Hall 1980 (Issues
in Vowel Harmony, ed. by R. Vago).

If you know of any other such harmony systems, please reply with ...

	a. the name of the language
	b. a brief description of the system
	c. a bibliographical reference or two

... roughly as I have done above for Nez Perce.

If you happen to know of a language with a vowel harmony system that
is not exactly dominant-recessive but that has a vowel or class of
vowels that behaves in a dominant fashion (by imposing itself on all
other vowels regardless of its position in the word), this would be
very useful too.

I will post a summary to the List.


Sincerely,

Eric Bakovic
Rutgers University
bakovicrci.rutgers.edu