Don Winford
Professor, Linguistics

home > courses

Recent Courses

Languages in Contact

Linguistics 5651; Spring 2013

This is a graduate-level introduction to the study of language contact and its outcomes, as well as the social and linguistic factors that regulate contact-induced changes. We will examine a wide range of language contact phenomena from both general linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives, and survey current approaches to all of the major types of contact-induced change. We will consider both the linguistic and social aspects of the contact situation and how they affect the outcomes, with special attention to the general processes and principles that are at work in all cases of language contact. We can in general distinguish three broad kinds of contact situation: those involving language maintenance with varying degrees of bilingualism, those involving language shift or second language acquisition, and those that lead to the creation of new contact languages. However, these often overlap, and there are many situations that cannot be classified so readily. Some are characterized by interplay between maintenance and shift, while others involve types of interaction and mutual accommodation, which makes it difficult to place them in a single category. Similar difficulties arise in the case of the so- called new  contact languages, pidgins, creoles, and bilingual mixed languages. How can we explain contact phenomena? What combinations of social and linguistic influences conspire to produce them? What kinds of situation promote one type of outcome rather than another? We will attempt to answer questions like these in a unified empirical and theoretical framework within which both the outcomes and the processes and principles at work in each case can be identified and compared.

View entire syllabus [PDF]

An Introduction to Quantitative Sociolinguistics

Linguistics 661.02 (5602); Spring 2012

This is a graduate-level introduction to the study of language in its social context. The course explores quantitative approaches to the study of linguistic variation and its relationship to external (non-linguistic) factors. It explores the methodological and theoretical issues raised by attempts to account for variability at the levels of phonology and morphosyntax. We will explore the methodology of variationist studies, as it relates to questions of selection of speakers, the observation and recording of styles of speaking, the identification of linguistic variables in the context of an adequate linguistic analysis, and the kinds of hypotheses that statistical analyses can test. Students will have the opportunity to work first hand with a corpus of recorded speech (either of their own choice or supplied by the instructor) and to conduct a detailed quantitative analysis of some aspect of variation at the phonological or morphosyntactic level.

View entire syllabus [PDF]

Intro to Sociolinguistics

Linguistics 661.01 (5601); Fall 2012

This is a graduate-level introduction to the study of the relationship between language and society. The course will survey various approaches to this area of investigation, including the sociology of language, the ethnography of speaking, variationist sociolinguistics, and other frameworks. We will consider the basic concepts and terminology used in all of these approaches and attempt to evaluate the similarities and differences in their underlying assumptions, objectives and methods of analysis.

View entire syllabus [PDF]

Language and the Black Experience

Linguistics 505S; Winter 2012

This service-learning version of Linguistics 505 will combine the study of language and culture in the African American community, with service in a particular community setting, Weinland Park Elementary School located in Columbus, Ohio. The main focus of the course will be on investigation of the varieties of English used by African- Americans in the United States, and the general relationship between language and social organization in the African-American community. We will examine the history, structure, and use of African American English (AAE), and the role it plays in the culture of African Americans. We will also consider ideologies regarding the use of AAE, especially as they relate to social opportunity and disadvantage in education and other areas of social life. The classroom component of the course will provide students with background knowledge and preparation to guide them in the service learning component of the course, which will involve the tutoring of students at Weinland Park Elementary School. The tutoring experience is meant to enhance students  understanding of African American language and culture by giving them direct experience with language use and literacy development in African American elementary school children.

View entire syllabus [PDF]

Seminar in Contact Linguistics

Linguistics 681 (8650); Spring 2011

The goal of this seminar is to explore in some detail current theoretical frameworks for the investigation of the origins and development of various outcomes of language contact. The seminar is a follow-up to Ling 685, 'Languages in Contact', and presupposes coverage of that course syllabus or some equivalent (for example a background in Historical Linguistics). The class will be conducted seminar-style, with students leading discussion of key publications on various instances of contact-induced change and mixture. The course will be concerned both with the social contexts and factors that play a role in contact-induced change, and with the mechanisms and processes of change themselves. A key assumption is that the nature, direction and extent of contact induced change depends on non-linguistic factors such as community settings, codes of interaction, attitudes to the language varieties involved and to language mixture, and degrees of bilingualism among the speakers concerned. At the same time, factors such as the linguistic dominance relationships between the languages, the degrees of proficiency, and the types of agency involved play an important role in determining the nature of the resultant contact phenomena. The major theoretical framework we will use was first proposed by van Coetsem (1088, 2000), who distinguished between two transfer types, borrowing and imposition, which account for the vast majority of contact-induced changes. On the one hand, mechanisms of borrowing explain the unity of the contact phenomena found in cases of lexical and structural borrowing, insertional codeswitching, and the creation of bilingual mixed languages. On the other hand, mechanisms of imposition explain the similarities in the kinds of change observed in tutored and untutored second language acquisition, convergence, and pidgin and creole formation. One of the central concerns of the seminar will be to discover what all of these outcomes have in common, particularly with respect to the processes of change or restructuring involved, and the principles that guide them. We will examine various other frameworks that have been proposed for the analysis and classification of contact-induced changes, including Thomason & Kaufman's distinction between "borrowing" and "interference under shift", as well as theories of "transfer" in second language acquisition and creole formation. Van Coetsem's framework differs from others in focusing on the psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying contact-induced change, and is therefore compatible with psycholinguistic models of language production such as proposed by Levelt (1989), and amended by de Bot (2001) for bilingual speech. Emphasis will be placed on the empirical evidence required for testing various hypotheses, and students will be expected to explore specific case studies and data in some detail. Though the seminar will follow a central core of topics and issues, there will be a great deal of flexibility in the coverage of topics, so as to satisfy the varied interests of students. Students who are interested in any aspect of language contact are invited to attend.

View entire syllabus [PDF]