General Course Information

Instructor: Dr. Robert S. Carlisle
Section: Independent Study
Office: 201E Faculty Tower
Office Hours: 10:00-1:00 TTh and by appointment.
Office Telephone: 664-2127
Email Address: rcarlisle@csub.edu

Required Texts

Barrutia, R., & Schwegler, A. (1994). Fonética y Fonología Españolas, (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley.

This class is an introduction to Spanish/English contrastive linguistics. In general, contastive linguistics compares the phonology, morphology, and syntax of two or more languages for the purpose of language taxonomy. However, when applied linguists began using contrastive analysis as a tool in the 1950s, their primary purpose was to find differences between two languages in order to predict grammatical difficulties for second language learners who were thought to transer grammatical structures from the native language to the target language. In the following decades linguists have discovered that transfer accounts for only a small percentage of the errors that second language learners make, at least at the morphological and syntactic levels. However, phonology is another matter, and second language learners frequently transfer phonological patterns from the native language into the target language. For this reason, the current course will concentrate on comparing the phonological systems of Spanish and English.

Major topics of the course will include phonemes and their allophones, the distribution of allophones, broad and narrow transcription, phonological processes, the spelling patterns of English and Spanish, syllable structure, the written accent in Spanish, and frequently made phonological errors made by both native English speakers and native Spanish speakers when learning the other language. In addition, the course will introduce the notion of language universals and how they interact with phonological transfer to structure a second language phonology.

Finally, the course will cover a few specific morphological and syntactic differences between Spanish and English.

Students are required to take two examinations during the quarter, a midterm and a final. The dates of both examinations are in the class schedule. To learn the material of the course and to better prepare for the examinations, students are required to complete a number of exercises from Fonética y Fonologia Españolas. Although students will complete some of these exercises at home, they will always be discussed and shared in class. Many of these exercises require students to write both broad and narrow transcriptions, which is an important skill students will acquire during the quarter. Some of these transcriptions will be evaluated by the instructor and the scores will be calculated as part of the students' final grades. Finally, students will write a short term paper on the influence of language universals on the frequency of vowel epenthsis in the English of native Spanish speakers. Information for writing the term paper will come from both class lectures and from additional readings that are on reserve in the library. Students will not be able to write the term paper without reading the articles on reserve. All students must tune in their papers on June 10.

The final grades will be calculated according to the following schema.

As indicated in the table above, each of the examinations, the exercises and the term paper will be 25% of the final grade.

I have scheduled five hours of office hours per week for students, but I realize that many students have problems meeting with their instructors at specific times. Therefore, I actively encourage students to send me messages if they have questions about the content of the course. The questions should be as specific as possible and relate directly to the material being studied. More general questions should be asked during the class.

Bienvenido a la clase, and if you enjoy it, the the minor in linguistics might be for you.

Spanish 413 Course Syllabus