Overview

Francis (フランシス) Bond (凡土) : 2024, 2025 (DAS 5LAJ/6LAJ)

Wednesday 15:00-16:30, Room 2.39 tř. Svobody 26, 779 00 Olomouc

This course is an introduction to the linguistics of East and Southeast Asian languages. The course has the following objectives:

• The course introduces the largest language groups and the context in which they are spoken and introduces students to basic literature.
• Part of the course will be work with texts from several Asian languages, as well as the collection and analysis of own data.

After completing the course, students will be able to distinguish and compare language groups in this area. Furthermore, they will be able to understand the current relationships between language groups, and between official and regional or tribal languages. Students will systematically study one grammatical or linguistic phenomenon in the selected language or languages ​​in this area and will write a seminar paper about it, in which they will demonstrate both knowledge of specialist literature and the ability to analyze and describe the selected phenomenon.

Seminar work can be developed individually or in groups so that it is clear which part each student is responsible for. In the last week, students prepare a short informative presentation about their work for their colleagues.

Course Table of Contents

Week	Date	Topic	Other
1	09-24	Introduction
2	10-01	Language families, multilingualism, official languages
3	10-08	Vocabulary
4	10-15	Grammar
5	10-22	Metaphors across Languages
6	10-29	Minority languages of Southeast and East Asia
7	11-05	Reading week
8	11-12	Writing, its origin, spread and adaptation
9	11-19	Communication and Culture
10	11-26	Presentation on Minority Languages	Presentation! 🗣
11	12-03	Asian Englishes
12	12-10	Sound Structure of Asian languages
13	12-16	Presentation of seminar work	Presentation! 🗣
2025-01-31		Assignment Due (details)	Submit in moodle

Readings and Resources

These give authoritative overviews of language families, their distribution, scripts, Asian Englishes.

• Kingsley Bolton, Werner Botha, Andy Kirkpatrick (Eds.). (2020). The Handbook of Asian Englishes. Wiley, DOI 10.1002/9781118791882
• Florian Coulmas(1999). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. DOI 10.1002/9781118932667
• Alexander R. Coupe, František Kratochvíl (2020). Asia before English. In K. Bolton, W. Botha, & A. Kirkpatrick (Eds.), The Handbook of Asian Englishes (pp. 31-59). DOI 10.1002/9781118791882.ch2
• Enfield, N. J. (2018). Mainland Southeast Asian Languages. In: Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: A Concise Typological Introduction. Cambridge University Press; 2018:i-ii. DOI 10.1017/9781139019552
• Cliff Goddard (2005). The Languages of East and Southeast Asia: An Introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199248605
• Yu Li (2019). The Chinese Writing System in Asia: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (1st ed.). Routledge. DOI 10.4324/9780429345333

Guest lecture in 2024 on Tone in Asian Languages by Lian-Hee Wee (Hong Kong Baptist, University)

Assessment

The prerequisites for successful completion are the following:

• Regular attendance and active participation in class
• Presentation on a minority language
• Random notes (6 observations of things related to the course topic that surprised you in the discussion forum)
• Presentation on the chosen topic (final week)
• Seminar paper on the chosen topic (range 5-10 pages)

Acknowledgements

• Course is inspired by materials from František Kratochvíl and the book The Languages of East and Southeast Asia: An Introduction (Goddard, 2005).
• Favicon Icon by UIcons

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Source code for this course available here https://github.com/bond-lab/Linguistics-of-Asian-Languages under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence — CC BY 4.0.