A fieldwork exercise for
teaching undergraduate syntax
Marjorie Pak
mgpak@emory.edu
Emory University
SECOL 80
Spartanburg, SC
April 5, 2013
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Question 1
What do we want our students
to take away from
their study of syntax?
Question 2
What do they actually take away?
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3
The ideal balance
enough English syntax
to get a sense of how
rules and trees work
+
enough cross-linguistic
data to get a sense of the
range of syntactic variation
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How to achieve this balance?
(It’s hard enough just to teach English syntax!)
 PROPOSAL: include some exercises on descriptive syntax
 Get students to recognize, talk and write about properties
of a syntactic structure in various languages
 e.g. How are relative clauses formed in ____?
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Exercise #1
 Translate these sentences into another language. Work
with a native speaker if your proficiency is not very high.
Use the conventional 3-line notation for linguistic
examples we have practiced. What differences do you
observe between the way relative clauses are formed in
English and in your target language? Supply additional
examples to help support any patterns you believe you
have observed. Write 1-2 paragraphs.
1) We saw the women [who work at the hospital].
2) I read the book [that fell off the table].
3) We saw the women [you visited].
4) I need the book [that you borrowed].
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Preparation: Basic background on relative clauses
1)
2)
3)
4)
We saw the women [who work at the hospital].
I read the book [that fell off the table].
We saw the women [you visited].
I need the book [that you borrowed].
 A RC is a clause that modifies a noun
 Many languages have relative markers – Eng. that, who, Ø
 The noun that the RC modifies is called the head noun.
The RC follows the head noun in English.
 The head noun may be interpreted as the subject or the
object of the RC verb.
 subject RCs in (1)-(2)
 object RCs in (3)-(4)
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Follow-up discussion and grading
 Spend some time in class looking at a sampling of peers’
write-ups together
 Criteria for grading: Has the student...
 accurately observed patterns in the target language?
 appropriately used technical terms learned in class?
 included examples that support their claims?
 Students gain exposure to cross-linguistic variation and
also practice descriptive writing about observations
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Exercise #2: Eliciting RCs in an unfamiliar language
 I scheduled small-group elicitation sessions with a
native speaker of Kiswahili
 a former graduate student
 paid a small stipend
 was instructed to speak slowly and clearly but not
unnaturally, and not to spell words for students
 gave permission for students to record (but students
should still double-check)
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The instructor does not need to know Kiswahili.
Like other Bantu languages, Kiswahili works well because
 consonants and vowels are familiar for English
speakers and easy to transcribe with IPA
 agglutinative morphology is an interesting challenge –
very different from English but highly transparent
 unfamiliar to most students but fairly well-studied;
online dictionaries, tutorials, etc. are available...
 ...so the assignment can be tailored to various levels
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Preparation: Background on Kiswahili morphosyntax
 Like many other Bantu languages: SVO, pro-drop,
agglutinative morphology with multiple noun classes
 Noun roots in Kiswahili must always occur with a prefix
designating the noun class.
 Noun class is similar to gender – a way of classifying nouns
into (arbitrary?) categories that affect the noun itself as
well as agreeing adjectives, articles, etc.
 un-a pulsera
bonit-a
Spanish
a-FEM bracelet[FEM] pretty-FEM
‘a pretty bracelet’
 un
anillo
bonit-o
a.MASC ring[MASC] pretty-MASC
‘a pretty ring’
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 But instead of 2 or 3 genders, Bantu languages have
10+ noun classes!
 The class of any given noun must be learned and
memorized.
 But it’s not entirely arbitrary…
 Each even-numbered class is the plural of the
preceding (odd-#’d) class
 Semantic patterns: e.g. class 1 nouns are always people
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Unlike in Eur. languages, the verb agrees with the subject in noun class.
 Verb morphology: subject agreement + tense + verb root
 a-na-fika.
ni-li-nunua kiti.
_______________
_______________
_______________
‘He/she arrives’
‘I bought the chair.’
‘He/she bought the chairs.’
‘The chair arrives.’
‘The chairs arrive.’
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(http://mwanasimba.online.fr/E_Chap07.htm)
Preparation: a student’s notes
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1. ST:
Okay, um, could you say ‘The teacher buys books’?
2. KS:
Mwalimu ananunua
vitabu.
teacher
books
CL1.PRES.buy
3. ST:
Could you say ‘I saw the books that the teacher buys’?
4. KS:
Niliona
vitabu ambavyo mwalimu ananunua. (repeats)
1SG.PST.see books
REL.CL8
teacher
CL1.PRES.buy
5. ST:
Could you say ‘The child reads the book’?
6. KS:
Mtoto anasoma
child
kitabu.
CL1.PRES.read book
7. ST:
Um, could you say ‘I saw the child that reads the book’?
8. KS:
Niliona
mtoto anayesoma
1SG.PST.see child
kitabu.
CL1.PRES.REL.CL1.read book
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If all goes well, students discover...
 two ways to form RCs in Kiswahili
1) a prefix on the verb
anasoma ‘reads’  anayesoma ‘who/that reads’
2) amba- + noun-class
kitabu amba-cho anasoma ‘the book that s/he reads’
 Both relative markers show noun-class agreement
 Both options are reported to be available with both
subject and object RCs
 Our consultant heavily favored option 1 with subject RCs
and option 2 with object RCs
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Grading criteria

Students aren’t penalized if the consultant doesn’t
happen to produce both structures during their session

No penalty for misspellings or incorrect word breaks

But they are expected to elicit (and report on) subject
and object RCs modifying nouns of various classes

In grading, I pay attention to whether students

describe their particular group’s findings accurately

apply technical terms and discuss concepts accurately
(subject vs. object RCs, noun class, etc.)

write clearly and include appropriate examples
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Modifications
 Advanced students could read background papers on
Kiswahili relative clauses and discuss whether this
particular speaker conformed to reported patterns.
 Students watch The Linguists, read excerpts from Bowern
2008 or other books/articles about fieldwork practices,
and discuss challenges and limitations of this exercise.
 For larger classes where small-group sessions aren’t
feasible, students could listen to previously recorded
sessions, transcribe them and complete a report.
 And of course, the basic exercise can be adapted to a wide
range of languages and linguistic phenomena.
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What does this kind of exercise achieve?
 Students learn in-depth about syntactic phenomena in
another language
 A chance to learn about fieldwork practices for programs
that don’t have a dedicated Field Methods course
 Student comments:
 ‘It made me feel like a linguist.’
 ‘It was more difficult than I imagined.’
 ‘I now feel like I have some knowledge concerning
how to approach languages unfamiliar to me.’
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Many thanks to the Emory Program in Linguistics,
students in my Fall 2012 LING-242 class, and our
patient and generous Kiswahili consultant.
References
Bowern, Claire. 2008. Linguistic fieldwork: a practical guide. Palgrave
McMillan.
Demuth, Katherine & Harford, Carolyn. 1999. Verb raising and subject
inversion in Bantu relatives. JALL 20, 41-61.
Edelsten, Peter, Kula, Nancy & Marten, Lutz. 2010. Swahili relative clauses.
Handout from talk given at Colchester which hunt, University of Essex.
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