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Naomi NagyLinguistics at U of T |
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TBB 199.15W: Exploring Heritage LanguagesAssignment 4For this assigment, you have a choice between two tasks. The first one listed (HLF = Heritage Language Fluency) is for students who are fluent in a heritage language and will use those abilities in the assignment. The second one listed is for students who choose not to work in a Heritage Language (E=English). You are very strongly encouraged to work in groups of two or three for this assignment. All group members will receive the same grade. It is up to you to decide how to divide the work. That's a very important skill. For whichever assignment you choose, you will:
Assignment 4 HLF: Analysis of changing complexity in a HLYour task is to design and conduct a research project that tells us about possible differences in complexity of the language used by different generations of speakers. You will compare six speakers: two first generation, two second generation, and two third generation. They should otherwise be as matched as possible (in terms of age and sex, at least). Design a measure of complexity that you think might distinguish HL speakers of different generations. Some ideas for this are:
You will want to select a measure that is both interesting and reasonably easy to implement in ELAN. This may require some exploring of ELAN's features, or learning to export transcripts from ELAN to use in another program that you are familiar with.
For this assignment, you will use transcribed data from a sociolinguistic interview that forms part of HerLD, the Heritage Language Database of HLVC. To access these files, you must read, sign and submit the corpus use form in the Corpora in the Classroom website (https://corpora.chass.utoronto.ca). Depending on the measure you choose, you may analyze the full interview for each speaker, or select a subsection of the interview. You might also come up with a measure for which it is possible and interesting to examine more than six speakers. We'll talk... Assignment 4 E : Neighborhood profileIn this assignment, you will investigate the use and maintenance of languages other than English in a neighbourhood in the greater Toronto area (GTA). Pick a neighborhood in the GTA that you think has good representation of your selected HL. Delimit your neighbourhood according to major streets, making sure to include a mixture of residential and commercial areas. Focus on the languages used for everyday activities in that neighbourhood by communities of (native or bilingual) speakers, rather than languages studied for academic purposes. For example, don’t just look at whether Italian is taught in the local high school, but also whether there are Italian speakers living in the area, or clubs or businesses where Italian is regularly spoken. Gather as much information on language use in the neighbourhood as you can by making use of the following sources (among others):
Write up the findings of your investigation in a report that addresses the following questions, organized in terms of your hypotheses:
Use these questions to organize your report (but don’t simply answer them in the above order). Be sure to describe your methods, including the scope of your investigation and what you did to obtain information. As part of your report, indicate where your neighborhood is located on a printed Google map (Street View) of Toronto. (You can do this by picking addresses/locations at the corners of your neighborhood and asking Google to Get Directions from each point to the next. You might know some more clever way. If so, let me know.) Your hypotheses might relate to these questions:
Last updated January 21, 2015 |