Seminaria licencjackie - studia stacjonarne 2015–2016 :: BA Seminars - full-time programme 2015–2016

Over the past few decades, due to observable shifts in cultural, academic or literary attitudes towards textual practices, increased attention has been paid to the authors whose inclination to give room to the dispossessed/marginalized/victimized appears evident. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems legitimate to claim that particularly women played a major role in aesthetic thematization of the aforementioned issues. Even if there are any counterarguments that could pave the way for different conclusions, and their consideration might be of some interest to this seminar, the most fundamental question to be posed is to what extent a distinct male point of view is recognizable within the British literary field. Are men not preoccupied with the problem of the peripheral/voiceless? Is it possible, in the above context, to define domains where a potential convergence or divergence of literary objectives, as listed by male authors, takes place? To give answers to these questions, and many more, I would like to submit to critical evaluation a set of literary narratives of such luminaries of English fiction as Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes or Peter Ackroyd.

The aim of the seminar is to study the contemporary Canadian literature, with a special emphasis on the notions of multiculturalism and identity, their roots and influence on contemporary prose. During the course students will discuss various works of the most famous contemporary Canadian writers (e.g. Margaret Atwood, Fred Wah, Michael Ondaatje and Alice Munro) as well as a selection of theoretical and critical essays (e.g. by Linda Hutcheon, Margaret Atwood, Wayson Choy) that will provide a certain background for our discussions and future BA papers. We will place a range of chosen literary texts in the Canadian historical and cultural contexts. The seminar will introduce students to the process of writing BA papers within the field of literature. We will address a number of issues ranging from the formal aspect of writing theses to methodology of research, gathering materials and developing a critical approach to the views of others.

Candidates wishing to participate in the seminar should have good knowledge of English and American literature and an authentic interest in literature. Prior knowledge of Canadian literature is not obligatory.

Selected Bibliography:
Hammill, Faye. 2007. Canadian literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kröller, Eva-Marie. 2004. The Cambridge companion to Canadian literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
New, W.H. 2003. A history of Canadian literature. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

In this seminar we will examine the structure of dictionaries and their use. Students will get an insight into a variety of dictionary types on paper and in electronic form. The seminar will be mainly concerned with, but not limited to, dictionaries for learners of English as a foreign language. The treatment of different information categories in such dictionaries as well as search options, radically changed by the electronic medium, will be carefully considered. We will also see how selected (learners’) dictionaries present information on language and assess the identified solutions. Apart from dictionary structure, research into dictionary use is an important focus of the seminar. Methods of monitoring dictionary consultation will be presented and we will reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. Students will learn how to determine what really happens during dictionary look-up and measure the effects of dictionary consultation. Selected studies discussed in class will show how research methods are employed in practice. BA projects could involve comparative dictionary analysis or empirical research into a selected aspect of dictionary use. Students’ preparedness, active involvement in weekly discussions and work on BA projects will be evaluated. Course requirements include interest in words, language and dictionaries.

Atkins, Sue B. T. and Michael Rundell. 2008. The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Béjoint, Henri. 2010. The Lexicography of English. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Hartmann, Reinhard R. K. 2001. Teaching and Researching Lexicography. Harlow: Longman.
Sterkenburg, Piet van (ed.). 2003. A Practical Guide to Lexicography. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

The aim of the seminar is to explore aspects of present-day ways of approaching Elizabethan drama. These will be contextualised in 1. the conventions of early modern English theatre; 2. the history of stage and film transpositions of Elizabethan plays. The historical overview serves as the first step in the approach to the 20th and 21th century adaptations of Elizabethan plays, most notably those written by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson, especially Shakespeare’s plays thanks to their popularity. It is important to note that the productions will include both Polish and English / American renderings of Elizabethan plays, presented in three independent media: theatre, film and television. The seminar will be devoted to an examination of selected stage productions (both Polish and English / American) and the way in which they have been documented (reviews, television clips and recordings, etc.), as well as to a discussion of the variety of categories of Shakespeare films and teleplays (again, both Polish and English-speaking). The productions will be considered in light of text, stage and screen semiotics. The analysis will be conducted with the help of methodological tool which would facilitate approach to stage and screen productions. The tools will be based mainly on theatre and film semiotics; the major focus will be on how the literary text of a play is translated into its stage version, and / or how the literary text and the performance text (both the original Elizabethan performance and the 20th and 21st stage productions) are rendered on screen, both big and small.

Critical questions to be addressed:
Can we separate drama from theatre?
Should dramatic text, composed in the natural language, be treated as different from its stage rendering?
What is the role of the study of signs in a critical analysis of dramatic / theatrical / filmic / televisual text?
How is historical drama / theatre accommodated to present-day stage and screen?
What is the cultural ‘value’ of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in early 21st century?
How can stage / film / television versions of Elizabethan drama be analysed?

Select bibliography:
Aston, Elain and George Savona. 1991. Theatre as Sign System. London – New York: Routledge.
Balme, Christopher. 2002. Wprowadzenie do nauki o teatrze [Introduction to theatre studies]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Barroll, J. Leeds et al. 1975. The Revels History of Drama in English. Vol. III 1576-1613. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.
Bevis, Richard W. 1988. English Drama: Restoration and Eighteenth Century, 1660-1789. London – New York: Longman.
Brown, John Russell. 2002. Shakespeare and the Theatrical Event. Houndmills: Palgrave / Macmillan.
Bulman, James C. (ed.) 1996. Shakespeare, Theory and Performance. London – New York: Routledge.
Cartmell, Deborah. 2000. Interpreting Shakespeare on screen. London: Macmillan Press.
Coursen, H.R. 1992. Shakespearean Performance as Interpretation. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London – Toronto: Associated University Press.
Cox, John D. and David Scott Kastan (eds.) 1997. A New History of Early English Drama. New York: Columbia University Press.
De Marinis, Marco. 1993. The Semiotics of Performance. Tr. by Áine O’Healy. Bloomington – Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Dessen, Alan C. 1985. Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dessen, Alan C. 1994. “Shakespeare and the theatrical conventions of his time”, in: Wells, Stanley (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 85-100.
Elam, Keir. 1980. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London – Methuen: New York. Esslin, Martin. 1987. The Field of Drama. London: Methuen.
Fabiszak, Jacek. 2005. Polish Televised Shakespeares. A Study of Shakespeare Productions within the Television Theatre Format. Poznań: Motivex.
Fabiszak, Jacek. 2000. “Elizabethan Staging and Greenawayan Filming in Prospero’s Books,” in: Stalpaert, Christel (ed.). Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books: Critical Essays. Ghent: Academia Press. 121-139
Gurr, Andrew. 1987. The Shakespearean Stage 1574-1642. The Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gurr, Andrew. 1997. Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hatchuel, Sarah. 2000. A Companion to the Shakespearean Films of Kenneth Branagh. Winnipeg, Niagara Falls: Blizzard Publishing.
Hatchuel, Sarah. 2004. Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hendrykowski, Marek. 1999. Język ruchomych obrazów. Poznań: Ars Nova.
Hilton, Julian. 1987. Performance. London: Macmillan.
Innes, Christopher. 1995. Modern British Drama 1890-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jackson, Russel (ed.). 2000. The Cambridge companion to Shakespeare on film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kowzan, Tadeusz. 1998. Znak i teatr. Warszawa: Polskie Towarzystwo Semiotyczne.
Leggatt, Alexander. 1988. English Drama: Shakespeare to the Restoration, 1590-1660. London – New York: Longman.
Lapsley, Robert and Michael Westlake. 1988. Film Theory: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Limon, Jerzy. 2002. Między niebem a sceną. Gdańsk: słowo/obraz terytoria.
Pfister, Manfred. 1991. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rothwell, Kenneth S. 2004. A History of Shakespeare on screen. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stam, Robert. 2002 [2000]. Film theory. An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Thomson, Peter. 1994a. Shakespeare’s Theatre. Second edition. London – New York: Routledge.
Thomson, Peter. 1994b. “Playhouses and players in the time of Shakespeare”, in: Wells, Stanley (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 67-84.
Ubersfeld, Anne. 2002. Czytanie teatru I. Przełożyła Joanna Żurowska.Warszawa: PWN.
Wells, Stanley and Sarah Stanton (eds.) 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Worthen, W.B. 1996. “Staging ‘Shakespeare’. Acting, authority, and the rhetoric of performance”, in: Bulman, James C. (ed.) Shakespeare, Theory and Performance. London – New York: Routledge. 12-28.

We are ‘sunk’ in the language that reaches us through newspapers, radio, television, the Internet, or magazines. At the same time, we have no doubt that mass-media messages without evaluation do not exist. Every message on the current issues, such as the political, social and economic crises which reaches the public sphere is shaped according to values which structure ideologies. Therefore, the language of mass media is a very interesting subject for linguistic inquiry.
The general aim of this course can be characterised as applying theories and methods proposed within Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to the analysis of authentic journalistic texts. As journalists entirely rely on the language use when they construct the image of events, people responsible for given actions and actions themselves, therefore, they use such linguistic features as topoi, lexical selection, metaphors, passive voice, modal verbs and pronouns. The fact that print media are still believed to be the most influential and opinion-shaping is main reasons for choosing the traditional print media and/or their electronic equivalents as the source of the language material for the analysis.
Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and power. London: Longman. (Ch. 5: 109–139).
Fowler, Roger. 1991. Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press. London: Routledge. (Ch. 5: 66–90)
Gabrielatos, Costas and Paul Baker. 2008. “Fleeing, sneaking and flooding. A Corpus Analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press, 1996-2005.” Journal of English Linguistics 36; 1. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage Publications, 5-38
Kielar, Maciej. 2009. “Modality as a discursive marker of values and valuation.” In: Wąsik Zdzisław – Józef Zaprucki (eds.) Słowo jako wyraz duchowości człowieka [A word as an expression of human's spirituality]. Jelenia Góra: Kolegium Karkonoskie w Jeleniej Górze: Zeszyty Wydziału Humanistycznego III, 85–98.
Kielar, Maciej. 2010a. “Values as discursive markers of national identity.” In: Romedea, Adriana-Gertruda (ed.) Cultural Spaces and Identities in (Inter)Action. Bacau: Alma Mater Bacau: INTERSTUDIA 6/2010, 48–57.
Kielar, Maciej. 2010b. “Values of the 2004 EU Enlargement in Media Discourse.” Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 46/3: 313–330
Kress, Gunther – Robert Hodge. 1979. Language as ideology. London: Routledge - Kegan Paul. (Ch. 2: 15–37)
Lecheler, Sophie. 2008. “EU membership and the press. An analysis of the Brussels correspondents from the new member states.” Journalism 9 (4). Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage Publications, 443-463.
Luke, Allan. 2001. “Ideology.” In: Rajend Mesthire (ed.). Concise encyclopedia of sociolinguistics. Amsterdam, New York, Oxford, Shannon, Singapore, Tokyo: Elsevier, 559–563.
Oberhuber, Florian, Christoph Baerenreuter, Michał Krzyżanowski, Heinz Schoenbauer and Ruth Wodak. 2005. “Debating the European Constitution. On representation of Europe/the EU in the press.” Journal of Language and Politics 4: 2. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 227-271.
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1994. Approaches to discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.
Schuck, Andreas, R.T. and Claes H. de Vreese. 2006. “Between risk and opportunity: News framing and its effect on public support for EU enlargement.” European journal of communication 21; 1. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage Publications, 5-32.
Van Dijk, Teun, A. 1997a. “The study of discourse.” In Teun A. van Dijk (ed.) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction vol. 1: Discourse as structure and process. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage Publications, 1-32.
Van Dijk, Teun, A. 1997b. “Discourse as interaction in society. ” In Teun A. van Dijk (ed.) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction vol. 2: Discourse as structure and process. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage Publications, 1-37.
Van Dijk, Teun, A. 1998. Ideology: A multidisciplinary approach. London: Sage Publications. (Chs. 5, 6: 65–77)
Wodak, Ruth. 2002. ‘What CDA is about – a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments.’ In: Ruth Wodak (ed.) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, 1–13.
Wodak, Ruth – Brigitta Busch. 2004. “Approaches to media texts.” In: John D. H. Downing (ed.) The Sage handbook of media studies. Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 105–122.

This BA seminar will examine the literary experience of exile, dislocation and the good life in the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Katherine Anne Porter and others. Most of these works were either written or set in Paris or Berlin and the seminar will try to recreate their historical context in post-Versailles Europe. Consideration will also be given to the creation of new prose techniques by these writers: for example, Stein’s attempts to capture a “continuous present” and Hemingway’s use of a minimalist style. Each participant in the seminar should select a writer or topic from this body of expatriate writing as the subject of their BA dissertation and should try to examine this subject from an original perspective.  

Short bibliography
Ernest Hemingway, The First Forty Nine Stories
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
J. Gerald Kennedy, Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing, and American Identity
Katherine Anne Porter, The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives

This seminar will focus on the impact of modern web-based resources on the study of English, both by linguists and learners of English. Thanks to the internet, a growing number of such resources have now become available, including but not limited to: digital dictionaries, corpora and corpus query systems, web-as-corpus systems, machine translation services, writing assistants.

Possible research projects include: (1) critical and/or comparative analyses of the various types of resources; (2) surveys of their use by language learners or language professionals; (3) studies of their usability; and (4) corpus-based studies of English usage.

Sample readings:
Campoy Cubillo, Maria Carmen. 2010. “Corpus, lexicography, and language learners”, in: Ilan Kernerman and Paul Bogaards (eds.), English Learners' Dictionaries at the DSNA 2009. Tel Aviv: K Dictionaries, 107–119.
Davies, Mark. 2008-. The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 425 million words, 1990-present. (http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.).
Frankenberg-Garcia, Ana. 2014. “The use of corpus examples for language comprehension and production”, ReCALL 26, 2: 128–146.
Kilgarriff, Adam. 2007. “Googleology is bad science”, Computational Linguistics 33, 1: 147–151.
Kilgarriff, Adam, Pavel Rychlý, Pavel Smrž and David Tugwell. 2004. “The Sketch Engine”, in: Geoffrey Williams and Sandra Vessier (eds.), Proceedings of the Eleventh EURALEX International Congress, EURALEX 2004, Lorient, France, July 6-10, 2004. Lorient: Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Université de Bretagne Sud, 105–116.
Moon, Rosamund. 2013. “Braving synonymy: From data to dictionary”, International Journal of Lexicography 26, 3: 260–278. August 1, 2013.
Paquot, Magali. 2012. “The LEAD dictionary-cum-writing aid: An integrated dictionary and corpus tool”, in: Sylviane Granger and Magali Paquot (eds.), Electronic lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 163–185.

One of the central questions addressed by contemporary phonological theories is concerned with the way in which segments combine to form larger linguistic units. Phonotactics is a branch of phonology dealing with language-specific restrictions on segment combinations, in particular on strings of consonants occurring in words and syllables. Since consonant clusters are generally dispreferred cross-linguistically, the study of languages with complex phonotactics becomes particularly interesting. For example, while most languages prefer the CV (consonant + vowel) structure, English allows up to 3 and 4 consonants word-initially and finally respectively (/spl-/ in splash, /-rlds/ in worlds), and Polish permits CCCCCC word-medially (/-mpstfj-/ in przestępstwie 'crime' [inflected]).
    The structure of the seminar will be twofold. Firstly, we will focus on theoretical approaches to phonotactics by discussing models which have been proposed to describe the structure of word/syllable margins. For instance, sonority predicts that segments in a cluster should be organized according to their sonority (determined by manner of articulation features), decreasing from the vowel outward. This prediction, however, is violated in clusters such as /sp st sk/ in spin, stain, skate, and /dz ps kt/ in beds, keeps, act. To account for their existence in English, we shall discuss other models using a different set of features (e.g. place of articulation and voicing) as well as morphology and frequency of occurrence. The second part of the seminar will consist in looking into empirical studies focused on acquisition, perception and production of phonotactics.
    In their B.A. theses, students will be encouraged to work on a topic (theoretical/empirical) of their own choice, using quantitative and/or qualitative evidence. Possible areas of investigation can include: language acquisition, perception or production of phonotactics. Exploring English consonant clusters is obligatory; however, if preferred, languages other than English can also be researched after prior arrangement with the tutor. Cross-linguistic comparisons are welcome.

Course requirements
This seminar is offered to students who have prior knowledge of some basic concepts in phonology (e.g. phoneme, distinctive features, syllable). Successful completion of the course will involve regular class attendance, active contribution to in-class discussions (including oral presentations), and completion of all reading assignments on time. Additionally, students will be required to receive a passing grade (60%) for two semester tests.

Interview
The interview will take place via Skype. Students who sign in for the seminar will be informed in advance about the specific time frame, during which they should be available for the qualifying talk.

Selected literature
Bertinetto, P. M. & S. Scheuer & K. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk & M. Agonigi. 2006.     “Intersegmental cohesion and syllable division in Polish”, in: J. Trouvain & W. J.     Barry (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Saarbrücken, 6-10 August 2007. Saarbruecken: University of Saarbruecken, 1953-    1956.
Carlisle, R. 2001. “Syllable Structure Universals and Second Language Acquisition”, IJES, vol. 1 (1), 1-19.
Dressler, W. U. &. K. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk. 2006. “Proposing morphonotactics”, Wiener Linguistische Gazette 73, 1-19.
Dryer, M. S. & M. Haspelmath (eds.). 2011. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library (relevant articles)
Greenberg, J. H. & C. A. Ferguson & E. A. Moravcsik (eds.). 1978. Universals of Human Language (Vol. 2, Phonology). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (relevant     articles).
Maddieson, I. 2009. ''Calculating phonological complexity“, in: F. Pellegrino & E. Marsico & I. Chitoran & C. Coupe (eds.), Approaches to Phonological Complexity. Mouton de     Gruyter, Berlin, 85–109.
Schreier, D. 2005. Consonant change in English worldwide: synchrony and diachrony. Houndmills, Basingstoke ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan  (relevant fragments).
Shockey, L. 2003. Sound Patterns of Spoken English, Blackwell (relevant fragments).
Yavaş, M. 2011. “The role of sonority in the acquisition of interlanguage coda clusters”, in: Wrembel, M., Kul, M. & Dziubalska-Kolaczyk, K. Achievementsand Perspectives in SLA Speech, 297-307. Peter Lang Verlag.

In this ‘’historical pragmatics-meets-history of the book’’ seminar we will consider texts written in the British Isles between the early medieval and late Renaissance periods in their material context, i.e. the codex format. We will take a look at the language, handwriting, artwork, and physical make-up of the bound volumes, all of which determined the reading of texts before the era of printing and shortly after William Caxton entered the English scene. We will see how much is lost in translation between the parchment codex and the printed paper- (or hardback) and how modern technology brings part of the pre-print reading experience back to the Internet user.  Over the course of the seminar Students are expected to work towards the completion of a B.A. paper concerning any topic involving the study of a handwritten early English text, available online as a digitised facsimile. Apart from submitting their final papers, Students will be required to perform homework assignments, related to readings assigned to each meeting.

Selected readings:
Carroll Ruth, Matti Peikola, Hanna Salmi, Mari-Lisa Varila, Janne Skaffari, and Risto Hiltunen. 2013. "Pragmatics on the Page. Visual Text in Late Medieval English Books". European Journal of English Studies 17(1): 54-71.
Clemens, Raymond and Timothy Graham. 2007. Introduction to Manuscript Studies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Derolez, Albert. 2003. The Paleography of Gothic Manuscript Books. From the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jucker , Andreas H. and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.) 2010. Historical Pragmatics. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Pahta, Päivi and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.) 2011.  Communicating Early English Manuscripts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Learner autonomy denotes, in most general terms, learners’ willingness and ability to take responsibility and control of their own learning. It is, therefore, a vital concept in today’s education, oriented toward learner-centeredness. It is believed that learner autonomy contributes to an improved quality of learning, as it prepares learners for independent study in the classroom and outside of it, and, consequently, fostering learner autonomy seems to be among the reponsibilities of an effective teacher.

  In the course of the seminar, a vast array of topics related to the concept of autonomy in the field of ELT (English Language Teaching) will be explored. Moreover, since the seminar participants will be required to conduct a small-scale research project, selected research tools commonly used in applied linguistics will also be discussed.

  The seminar participants will be encouraged to formulate their own topics for the BA papers; they can, however, be inspired by background reading and suggestions from the supervisor. These are some preliminary suggestions for possible BA project topic areas:

Credit requirements include: fulfilling all reading assignments, conducting one presentation per semester (literature-based in the first semester and research-based in the second one), active participation in class discussions, and timely submissions of particular parts of the BA paper.

Selected literature:
Benson, Peter. 2011. Teaching and researching autonomy in language learning (2nd edition) Language learner autonomy and the European Language Portfolio: Two L2 English examples. London: Pearson.
Gardner, David (ed.). 2011. Fostering autonomy in language learning. Gaziantep: Zirve University. (available at http://ilac2010.zirve.edu.tr)
Lamb, Terry and Hayo Reinders (eds). 2008. Learner and teacher autonomy: Concepts, realities, and responses. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Little, David. 2009. Language learner autonomy and the European Language Portfolio: Two L2 English examples. Language Teaching 42/2. 222-233.

The aim of this seminar is to move toward the question what syntactic theory is really a theory of (and why syntax is not a theory of word order). After an overview of basic concepts in grammar like Merge, argument structure, or case (most in fact already intro- duced in one way or another in the “Introduction to Syntax” course), we will move on to discuss topics like control, binding, islands, quantifiers, verb movement, adverbs, rela- tivized minimality, cartography, and economy principles in grammar. We will try to see if there exists a common ground for what seems to look like many distinct grammatical phenomena, and why all languages have them. All topics will be discussed from the general as well as English and Polish perspective. Possible BA thesis topics can include selected aspects of English or comparative English-Polish syntax or word-formation. Each student will receive individual guidance and help from the instructor at any point in the course and in the process of working on their BA projects.

Credit requirements
There is not going to be any written test. Instead, the final grade is going to be based on (i) at least one take-home problem set per semester, (ii) one in-class presentation per semester, and (iii) completion of the BA thesis.

Sample bibliography
We are not going to rely on any particular textbook in this course and will, instead, use a balanced mixture of quite basic didactic readings and a few original research papers. Some of them will include:
Cinque, Guglielmo, and Luigi Rizzi. 2008. The cartography of syntactic structures. CISCL Working Papers, Studies in Linguistics Vol. 2, 42-58.
Hornstein, Norbert, Jairo Nunes, Kleanthes Grohmann. 2005. Understanding Minimalism. Cambridge University Press.
McCloskey, James. 2000. Quantifier Float and Wh-movement in an Irish English. Linguistic Inquiry 31, 57-84.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the Left Periphery. In: Liliane Haegeman, ed., Elements of Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 281- 337.

This seminar will be devoted to the discussion of the key issues in child language acquisition. Its aim is to give you an insight into the process of phonological, lexical and morphosyntactic development in children. The course will begin with the overview of theoretical perspectives on first language acquisition as well as biological foundations of language. Subsequently, we will go on to discuss methods used in the study of child development, both in infancy as well as upon the onset of speech. The third set of topics will comprise an overview of studies on phonological, lexical, morphological and syntactic development.

In order to complete the course, the participant will be required to:
1) attend classes
2) complete all reading assignments
3) actively participate in class discussions
4) prepare oral presentations
5) pass short quizzes as well as 2 semester tests
6) choose a research topic and conduct the research
7) write a thesis reporting on the results of the selected topic

The seminar will end in student’s submitting the BA thesis.

Course requirements:
1) Interest in the field of First Language Acquisition;
2) No prior experience in the field is required. However, students are advised to read a chapter of their own choice from Erica Hoff’s handbook (the reference in bold below). 

Selected references:
Clark, E. 2003. First language acquisition. Cambridge: CUP.
Fletcher, Paul – Michael Garman (eds.). 1986. Language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fletcher Paul – Brian MacWhinney (eds.) 1995. The handbook of child language. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hoff, Erika. 2014. Language development. Belmont: CA. Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
Lust, B. C. – Foley, C. 2004. First language acquisition. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Vihman, Marylin May. 1996. Phonological development: The origin of language in the child. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
Villiers, Jill. G. de. – Peter de Villiers. 1979. Language acquisition. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Yavaş, Mehmet (ed.). 1994. First and Second Language Phonology. San Diego, California: Singular Publishing Group Inc.

Interview
The interview will take place via Skype. Students who sign in for the seminar will be informed in advance about the specific time frame, during which they should be available for the qualifying talk.