This course will consist of a survey of characteristic features of African languages, with special emphasis on Hausa.
Textbook
The required textbook this course is the following:
Kraft, Charles H., and A. H. M. Kirk-Greene. 1973. Teach Yourself Books: Hausa. NY: McKay.
In addition, various other publications will be consulted from time to time, most important among them being:
Welmers, William E. 1973. African Language Structures. Berkeley: University of California.
From time to time we will also be exploring the Hausa web site at
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/aflang/Hausa
Course Goals
This course has the following major goals:
1) To develop an introductory understanding of debates regarding African language classification2) To develop a general understanding of some typological features of African languages
3) To apply syntactic theory (and to a lesser extent, phonological theory) to an extensive amount of real language data, including texts
4) To develop an in-depth understanding of the structure of Hausa as representative of African language structures (of one type)
Student Responsibility
Each student is expected to come to class prepared to discuss the material assigned for that day. In addition, the following are required as the means for evaluation of performance in the course:
1) Project--each student will develop a mini-grammar of Hausa to be turned in for evaluation; this is to be a theoretically sound presentation (the selection of the theoretical model to be used is left up to the individual student) which covers all areas included in the assignments on the Assignment Sheet (note that in view of the fact that it will be developed piecemeal as the semester progresses, this grammar is not expected to be professional in terms of final written form, but it is expected to be internally consistent, as complete as the data allow, and insightful). We will all undoubtedly learn a lot from this task, and areas of uncertainty of analysis are expected. See Project Assignment sheet for further details.2) Reports--each student will present an oral report on an article which will elaborate on a topic of interest in the field (see Student Reports). The following will be considered in evaluation: clarity, completeness, quality of handout, professionalism of presentation.
3) Text analysis--each student will take responsibility for analysis and presentation of same for Hausa texts (selected and assigned by the instructor), again applying whatever orientation is most appealing. It is expected that there will be professionally written papers, presented in a style and with a degree of scholarship consistent with presentation at a professional meeting. Due in written form at class time 12/2.
The mini-grammar will form 60% of the grade, with the oral report 10% and text analysis 30%. There will be no examinations in the course.