Lakota Structure with Glances at Some Other Siouan Languages

Instructor(s): David S. Rood

Description:
The course will survey Lakota phonology and grammar and provide extensive practice parsing formal, narrative texts recorded at various times between 1890 and 2006. It will not include much conversation or other spoken language. In addition, we will look at two excellent recent grammars of related languages: Osage (closely related) and Crow (more distant). Students should come away with an understanding of Lakota phonology, morphology and syntax and a rough idea of how those structures differ (or not) in related languages. We will begin with mostly lecture, but progress rapidly to student presentations of parsed text and reports on phenomena of your choice. The final project may be either a research paper or a mini grammar of a text passage. The course is an elementary introduction to these languages, but it will be assumed that you know enough linguistics to understand technical terminology and at least some of the issues in the study of structural universals.

Prerequisites:
None (an introductory linguistics course would be helpful, however).