Level 800- Masters in English and Linguistics

 

AEN 800:  The Description of Linguistic Form

This unit provides a study of the categories and systems used in Linguistic description.  Procedures due in syntax, phonology, morphology and semantics, established descriptive procedures are studied.   The analysis of the structures of African languages and English.

 

AEN 801: Structure of Modern English

The nature and ordering of sequences of words. Word groups and their functions.  Selected  areas of English Grammar within a given theoretical framework:  relationships

Between word group, clause types, co-ordination and subordination, adjunct, disjuncts and conjuncts. Apposition and anaphoric elements.

 

 

AEN 802: Linguistic Field Methods

Basic research methods and techniques in Linguistics and language use.   Identifying  a linguistic research problem and how to present it .  Field techniques and strategies for eliciting language data for various areas of research in language: e.g.  as applied to general linguistics,  applied

linguistics and sociolinguistics etc.

 

AEN 803: Sociolinguistics

Linguistics principles  and methods in geographical, social and stylistic variations within languages. Language and its uses – registers, development dialects, pidgins and creoles.  Language choice and language planning. Case studies of bilingual and multilingual communities. The language situation in Kenya and the role of English. Sociolinguistics Fieldwork.

 

AEN 804:  Language as Communication

What is communication? Roles of human language in communication; in human life. Communication process components; their relationship with discourse context. significance of pragmatic meaning as elements in communication: implicature, indirect speech acts, and polite messages. Models/ theories of communication. Communication contexts. The role of non-verbal communication. Interpersonal communication and social needs . Small group communication and turn- taking in conversation, discussion in groups. The role language in organizational communication. Linguistic variability and effective communication.

 

AEN 805:  Advanced Grammar

Developments in grammatical theory:  structural, functional and transformational approaches.  Clause/sentence analyses: apposition, (in) dependent, restrictive and non-restrictive clauses.   Semantic types of clauses, e.g. subjunctive, concession, purpose, result and reason.  Emphatic/stylistic structures.   The structure of texts.

 

AEN 806:   Syllabus Design and Material Preparation

The techniques of syllabus design and materials preparation. The relevance of  linguistic and learning theories on to the problems of practical syllabus planning. Practical work in needs assessment, formulating aims and objectives for different learning situations designing and/or adapting teaching materials. Selecting and evaluating text books.  Methodology for testing learner progress or /and achievement. 

 

AEN 807:  The Pedagogical Analysis of Spoken and Written Discourse

An introduction to pragmatics and pragmalinguistics; Speech Act Theory and Conversational implicature; form  - function and correlation. The structure of  spoken and written discourse. Approaches to the teaching of spoken English. Relationship between  reading and writing :  top-down and bottom-up approaches to the teaching of reading and the relevance of schema theory.

 

AEN 808:  Language Teacher Education and Classroom Research

Issues in the training of language  teachers:-particularly teachers of English as a second language.   Interlanguage and variability, inherent differences in thought systems, and the language environment. The language teacher as a researcher; the role of classroom research in teacher development.

 

AEN 809:Pedagogic Grammar and Lexis

The relationship between formal, reference and pedagogic grammars. The nature of pedagogic grammars. The learner as a researcher. The concept of data driven learning

 

AEN 810: Language Testing

Basic concepts in Language testing, Testing language form. Testing language use receptively and productively. Communicative language testing. Testing in the curriculum.  Issues in language  testing in the Kenyan context.

 

AEN  811:Linguistic Theories and Language Learning

Alternative linguistic theories from the point of view of their relevance to language teaching and learning. Various schools of Language teaching. Their teaching strategies  and materials. The interrelationship between linguistic learning theories and methodology.

 

AEN 812: Language Handicap and Pathology

The nature of Language handicap. Different types of clinical and educational treatments of language handicaps and the role of  linguistic insights in the diagnosis and remediation of handicaps.

 

AEN 813: Language Planning and Education

Language in society. Issues in language planning and policy in the developing world.   Evaluation of language policy and practice in Kenya. An educational response to linguistic diversity and variability.

 

 

AEN 814: Psycholinguistics

The theories of language acquisition and linguistic development. Interrelation between language, brain and thought. Perception processing and production of speech. Language and  personality.  Biological  evidence for innate language capacity. Principal  differences between human and animal communication.

 

AEN 815:  Discourse Analysis

Different approaches to the analysis of spoken and written discourse.  Elements of the structure of discourse: cohesion, coherence, and the other standards of textuality.  Patterns of discourse organization. The relationship between syntax, phonology and continuous discourse; Speech Act Theory.

 

AEN 816:  Language Variation and Function

Outstanding features and variation in languages in general, and of English in particular.   English diatypes: types according to purpose, subject matter, medium (speech or writing) or formality. English  dialects within and outside the British Isles. The role of  English or any other language as a national, international and second language.

 

AEN 817:  Advanced Description of English

Selected topics in theory and practice of grammatical  description.   Relationship between syntactic, semantic, pragmatics and discourse features.

 

AEN 818:  Comparative Historical Linguistics

The processes of language change which govern the historical and comparative study of language. The synchronic approaches to language analysis. Application of Linguistics principles for language classification into inflectional, isolating and agglutinative languages.  Application of Grimm’s and Verner’s Laws of Association of a language with other languages of its family and its protoform

 

 AEN 819:  Phonology

Principles of phonology and morphonology: segments and units beyond the segments, processes, phonotactics. Generative phonology; autosegmental, metrical and lexical phonology. An evaluative view of the binary feature system; Phonological universal.  Examples from African Languages.

 

AEN 820:  Morphology

Principles of morphological analysis. Current morphological  theories, generative and lexical. The notion of the word cross-linguistically structure. Structure of words in African languages.  Morphological universals.

 

AEN 821:  Syntax

Principles of syntax and morphosyntax. The notion of the sentence cross-linguistically, various approaches to the description and analysis of syntactic phenomena: functional and transformational.  Approaches to the description and analysis of morphosyntactic phenomena, e.g. incorporation Theory and Lexical-functional theories. Syntactic universals.  Examples form African languages.

 

AEN 822:  Linguistics Analysis

The nature of language structure: analysis of data into significant linguistic units.   contrasts in phonology, morphology and syntax. Other kinds of analyses of such as Discourse Analysis, computational Analysis and social networks. Statistical  analysis and  presentation of linguistic data.

 

AEN 823: Semantics

Approaches to the study of linguistic meaning lexical , structural  and logical semantics.  The place of semantics in Linguistic theory.  The syntax-semantics controversy.  The relationship between semantics and other disciplines.   Semantic Universals.   Examples from African Languages.

 

AEN 824: Pragmatics

Aspects of language use that are crucial to an  understanding of language as a system and especially to an understanding of meaning: speaker, hearer, context and linguistic form.   Central issues in pragmatics such as deixis, implicature, presupposition, speech acts and conversational structure.  Application of these principles to the study of English and other languages.

 

 

AEN 825:  Language and Culture

Language as it relates to world view. Modern theories in the field of language and culture. Language and ethnography. Language and social structure. The Linguistic context in Kenya.

 

 

AEN 826:Translation Theory And Interpretation

Translation theories such as the cultural  theory, e.g., comparative stylistic theory and linguistic theory of translation. The place of pragmatics, relevance theory and text linguistics in translation. Cultural functions of translation. Problems in understanding source texts.  Practical analysis of original and translated versions of texts.