SOME HELPS AND HINTS FOR THE LINGUISITICS 1 PAPER
    

Most students will have language experience similar to that laid out in the paper "How's Your Hausa?", i.e. most students will speak a language in which they have also had some schooling (typically English, but others as well) and they will have had reasonable formal instruction in a second language, as in a university course.

There are two types situations which the sample paper may appear not to apply to:

(1) "I had two years of Spanish in high school, but I have forgotten what little I ever learned."

Suggestion: Use the paper as an opportunity to explore why you did not learn anything and/or why you have forgotten it.
Comparison of Sounds and Comparison of Grammar: You will have to remind yourself a little bit of what was presented to you when you studied the language. If you don't have your old high school textbook, have a look at the text used at UCLA for elementary Spanish (or whatever language you studied). You can talk about what you DID NOT learn, e.g. you might note from looking at a Spanish text that Spanish has five vowel sounds (listing them) but that you never were encouraged to try to pronounce them correctly and so always had a strong American accent. For grammar, you might note that you never learned anything but the present tense, even though a textbook shows about 6 or 8 tense distinctions. Hence, you never learned to express anything of any complexity.
Language and Thought and Language Acquisition: You can talk about what went on in your classroom that failed to give you any sort of insight into the language or your ability to use it. For example, your teacher never spoke Spanish in the classroom. Compare this to your experience as you acquired your native language and to the experiences of other students who had more successful language training in school.

(2) "I speak Korean with my parents, but I don't know the grammar, I can't read or write it, and my family criticizes me, saying I talk like a baby."

Use this as an opportunity to learn something about Korean (or whatever your "home" language is) and why you can speak it at all, even without any training!
Comparison of Sounds: Think about the sounds in an organized fashion, going through the places of articulation and manners of articulation that we studied. Your language will almost certainly have sounds that combine place and manner of articulation in ways not found in English. If you don't know exactly how to describe the sounds, ask your TA or me. If your parents or other relatives speak with a strong accent in English, think about the English sounds they have trouble with, e.g. they cannot distinguish English l and r. This should lead an understanding of why they have trouble, e.g. their native language has only an "r" sound but no "l".
Comparison of Grammar: Keep it simple. Take the sentences and phrase types on page 32 of the APS book and find out the order of words in the various kinds of phrases (VP, NP, PP) and whether or not words have to have different endings depending on whether they are subject, object, possessor in a possessive phrase, etc. If you don't care for "lizards catching flies", you can talk about "dogs chasing cats", "cows eating grass", or anything other actions that appeal to you.
Language and Thought: Think of some word uses that differ in your home language and English. For example, does your home language require different forms for addressing older people vs. children? Does your home language make differences between kin terms such as younger vs. older sister, aunt who is your father's sister vs. aunt who is your mother's sister? Does your home language have words referring to specific odors that English does not have or vice versa?
Acquisition: Where and when did you learn English and your home language? How were the circumstances different? How do the situations where you used the languages differ? How did the way you learn English differ from that of your parents and how do the results differ in pronunciation, use of verb tenses, use of vocabulary?

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Avoiding the dreaded "CONFUSION OF SPELLING WITH PRONUNCIATION" problem

If you do not learn ANYTHING else in this course, I want you understand that the written form of a language does not occupy some privileged position in a discussion of LANGUAGE.Writing and literacy play an obviously important role in human civilization, but writing is a human invention, not part of the language instinct. The basis of writing is SPOKEN language, and in this course we have focused on the sounds of language, not the symbols that a writing system uses to represent those sounds. For this reason, it is essential in the "Comparison of Sounds" section of your paper that you do NOT compare spelling systems--you must concentrate on the sounds of the languages, not the way letters are used in the writing systems.

Here are two examples comparing English and Spanish. The first illustrates the "CONFUSION OF SPELLING WITH PRONUNCIATION" error. The second, though seemingly involving a similar topic, would be a comparison of the desired type.

WRONG!

"z" in Spanish and English

Spanish and English pronounce the letter "z" differently. In Spanish, "z" is a voiceless alveolar fricative. In English "z" is a voiced alveolar fricative. For example, zapato 'shoe' in Spanish is pronounced [sapato] whereas English zap is pronounced [zæp].

Why is this wrong? Because the focus is on the letter "z". Spanish and English do NOT "pronounce" the letter "z". They pronounce sounds represented by the letter "z". This letter isjust one of the written representations in Spanish for the sound [s], a comparison of no interest at all between Spanish and English, since both languages have the sound [s]!

RIGHT!

Alveolar fricatives in Spanish and English

Spanish has only one alveolar fricative, the voiceless alveolar fricative [s], as in sopa [sopa] 'soup', zapato [sapato] 'shoe', cerveza [serbesa] 'beer'. English has two alveolar fricatives: voiceless as in soup [sup], cease [sis] and voiced as in zap [zæp],cruise [cruz].

Why is this right? Because the focus in on sounds. It points out that in the area of alveolar fricatives, English has two, [s] and [z], whereas Spanish has only one, [s]. This fact has implications for Spanish speakers learning English. Because Spanish lacks a [z] sound, we will expect this sound to be difficult for Spanish speakers to pronounce, and in fact, a typical feature of a Spanish accent in English is to pronounce a word like 'busy' [bIzi] as [bIsi], substituting [s] for the English [z]. This has NOTHING to do with the way the words are spelled, it has to do with the difference in the sound systems of the two languages. As the examples in the paragraph above show, the sound [s] in Spanish has several spellings--"s" as in sopa, "z" as in zapato, and "c" as in cerveza. Likewise, English [s] can be spelled with "s" or "c" and [z] can be spelled with "z" or "s". The written symbols of both languages thus represent unreliable guides to pronunciation.

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What sounds can I choose to compare?

Every language has differences in pronunciation from every other language. However, there is no question that some languages have fewer distinct sounds than others and hence pose fewer problems in mastering pronunciation than languages with more complex sound systems. For example, Spanish has a smaller set of sounds than English. There are thus fewer hurdles for English speakers to clear in learning Spanish than vice versa--though an English speaker may end up with an accent when speaking Spanish, there are few sounds in Spanish which do not have close counterparts in English and which the English speaker can draw on when trying to speak Spanish.

If you find that the language which you want to compare to English is of this type, you might consider taking English as the "complicated" language, citing problems that English may pose for speakers of the other language. Here are some features of English pronunciation which tend to be unusual among languages of the world and hence often pose problems for speakers of other languages:

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