Linguistics

OP

Wow two replies on here already! Where you guys at etc? I'm at Lancaster in my third year :smile:

Reply 3

3rd year at Edinburgh here :smile:

I nearly went to Lancaster - got an offer for the North America programme, so had I gone there I would have been stateside last year.

Reply 4

Mijdge

9

I've just been rejected from both my courses I was applying for :frown:

I've still got three for English Language, but I don't think I really want to go now.

Reply 5

Mijdge

I've just been rejected from both my courses I was applying for :frown:

I've still got three for English Language, but I don't think I really want to go now.

Aw no, that sucks! How linguisticy are your Eng Lang courses?
You could look in extra perhaps? as there were several of the linguistics courses I applied for in extra, and in clearing the year I applied. This was for 2006 entry though.

---

lemily - how is the UCL course? I very nearly went there too (I'm making it sound like I very nearly went everywhere, I know) but the interview day totally put me off as it was so disorganised- they had no idea we were actually coming! Looked pretty cool though from all of the stuff they gave you... although fairly phonetic-y?

Reply 6

OP

So, I'll be a geek and ask what kind of things are people doing? This year (my third year) I'm doing my dissertation, a course in language change, a course in corpus linguistics and a course in theoretical linguistics. How are people finding linguistics?

Sorry to hear about your situation, Mijde; but English Language is pretty cool too. Are you applying to different universities this year? You could try applying to Lancaster (not just for the shameless plug, but Lancaster were really good with me coz I didn't get exactly the right grades but they let me in. I needed ABB but I got in with BBCC) or look in extra maybe as oxymoronic said.

Reply 7

jmj

So, I'll be a geek and ask what kind of things are people doing? This year (my third year) I'm doing my dissertation, a course in language change, a course in corpus linguistics and a course in theoretical linguistics. How are people finding linguistics?

Sorry to hear about your situation, Mijde; but English Language is pretty cool too. Are you applying to different universities this year? You could try applying to Lancaster (not just for the shameless plug, but Lancaster were really good with me coz I didn't get exactly the right grades but they let me in. I needed ABB but I got in with BBCC) or look in extra maybe as oxymoronic said.

Yeah Lancaster were pretty generous... I remember at the open day post offers they were like 'we've given you an offer and we want you, so if you don't get the right results on the day just give us a call as we will do all we can to keep you here as we've chosen you'... which I thought was nice, even though I declined their offer! It didn't stop them from sending me post about once a month all the way through until results day, when I recived a good luck card from them to go with the one they'd sent in during my A2s (wtf??) and a note saying that if I had missed my grades to give them a call as they still had a place for me!!! So yeah, Midjde: seriously, look into Lancaster as they have a damn good course and are pretty flexible. I'm sure they were in extra my year too. They also took general studies when I was applying.

Jmj - I'm not actually doing linguistics this year as I'm on a year abroad with the anthropology department so am focusing on social science this year. Not sure what I'll do when I get back as I'm considering switching to anthropology and development because I'll have missed a lot of linguistics and I want to go into post grad anth not ling, thats just an interest. Corpus ling sounds hard - I was spying on a 4th year in the library once and god it looked difficult! Language change looks interesting - what are you doing in that? Whats your dissertation on?

Reply 8

OP

oxymoronic

Yeah Lancaster were pretty generous... I remember at the open day post offers they were like 'we've given you an offer and we want you, so if you don't get the right results on the day just give us a call as we will do all we can to keep you here as we've chosen you'... which I thought was nice, even though I declined their offer! It didn't stop them from sending me post about once a month all the way through until results day, when I recived a good luck card from them to go with the one they'd sent in during my A2s (wtf??) and a note saying that if I had missed my grades to give them a call as they still had a place for me!!! So yeah, Midjde: seriously, look into Lancaster as they have a damn good course and are pretty flexible. I'm sure they were in extra my year too. They also took general studies when I was applying.

Yeah, Lancaster's great for Linguistics. Really friendly department and biggest in the country too (ok, now I am just doing some shameless plugging :p:

)

oxymoronic

Jmj - I'm not actually doing linguistics this year as I'm on a year abroad with the anthropology department so am focusing on social science this year. Not sure what I'll do when I get back as I'm considering switching to anthropology and development because I'll have missed a lot of linguistics and I want to go into post grad anth not ling, thats just an interest. Corpus ling sounds hard - I was spying on a 4th year in the library once and god it looked difficult! Language change looks interesting - what are you doing in that? Whats your dissertation on?

Fair enough. Corpus linguistics is quite hard, but it's not bad, it's quite cool seeing how different patterns of words are used in different groups of society and how it can be used to analayse the words in literature and stuff like that.

Language change is just looking at methods of how language changed in the English language in particular (Language change is more an English Language course than a Linguistics course as Linguistics, English Language and Sociolinguistics are all in the same department).

My dissertation is on how we access words from our mental lexicon (which is the part of our brain that stores our words, like a mental vocabulary) and the difficulties aphasics have with that process, and how those difficulties are evidenced in discourse. Basically I'm really interested with how we manage to get words in the first place, and the difficulties with people who have problems getting words from their brain to out of their mouths.

Year abroad with the anthropology department sounds really cool! So what kinds of things are you studying at the moment? :smile:

Reply 9

OP

I did a Language Acquisition Course last year :smile:

What did the logic and meaning course entail? Just coz Lancaster doesn't really do much semantics- there are a couple of lectures in first year that mentioned it, but that's all. Oh, and what courses are you doing this year? (Sorry, just being nosy now :p:

)

Reply 10

OP

Hey, sounds like you have a really good mix of options you can pick and choose from- part of me wishes I could have the chance to do modules in semantics, but then again if I had done a semantics module I might not be doing so much on semantics in my dissertation!

I'm in my third year now :smile:

Last year I did a module on language origins and language acquisition, a module on English grammar, a module on phonology and morphology (compulsory), and a sociolinguistics module on discourse. This year I'm doing a module on features of language change, another module on phonology and morphology (compulsory) a module on corpus linguistic and my dissertation.

How have you found second year this term?

Reply 11

Αξιολογος

Well, I suppose I'm technically a Classicist, but I'm taking two linguistics papers this year (out of four). Comparative linguistics and Latin and the Greek Language (bilingualism, standard languages, etc).

Reply 12

I love language acquisition, its my baby along with historical linguistics... I love language evolution stuff and working out the roots of where languages developed from and where they borrowed bits and bobs from. Not much of a fan of the phonetics/phonology side of it though... I really don't care how the sounds are made, just that they are made!

At Edinburgh the courses are entitled: Ling 1A (sem 1) and ling 1B (sem 2) in first year, then 2A and 2B in second year. Then you do like modules within the module, get seperate grades which create into one module grade.

We did semantics predicate logic in semster one of second year and it was the hardest thing ever... I presume its similar to what you did Lucy? I just could not get my head around it. The lecturer was alright but he put you to sleep a little bit... I ended up getting my boyfriend (who studies engineering) to explain it to me! And he took my lecture print outs to his class by mistake and then I was like why am I doing this course?! Am defintley much more of a social linguist than a logical one.

My year abroad is in Helsinki, Finland. Its actually really cool on the linguistics front because the university is trilingual and opperates in Finnish, Swedish and English simultaniously (like literally everything is printed/announced/whatever in all 3 languages) so all of the erasmus students are here to speak English and improve their English (other than the natives, as ours is just getting worse) so they all speak erasmus English. As in even though they're here, quite a lot of them don't know any native speakers so they don't learn native mannerisms or ways of speaking and they correct each others English but they do it wrong. Its really interesting! And then my friends are picking up so many new words (my group is very international with people from all over the place) that the British native crew can see them sounding more and more like us with our certain expressions by the day. Also its teaching me loads about English - you'd think explaining things would be easy having studied linguistics but there are certain things I just can not explain and have realised I don't know the word for! Trying to work out the difference between stop, finish and end took me 10 minutes the other day. So yeah... its really cool being here as my English has changed as a result of trying to make myself understood, as especially at first, no one had any idea what the native speakers were talking about as we spoke differently to how they'd been taught at school.

Reply 13

orange_monsoon

I've applied for Italian and Linguistics at Edinburgh Leeds Manchester and Cardiff - just waiting to hear from Edinburgh now, but I know they'll most probably take a while. I'm most interested in sociolinguistics and language aquisition - I'm worried about the sciency stuff as it wasn't exactly my strong point.

I do english language and literature, so we've touched on linguisticy things, mainly looking at transcripts. It's always a bit daunting starting a new subject, but it looks so interesting i'm sure it'll be good. I want to do english as my third subject at edinburgh - if only i'd get an offer!

Anyway, I've rambled long enough. It's great to find other linguisticy people though - I've yet to find anyone else who even know what it is!

Reply 14

orange_monsoon

I want to do english as my third subject at edinburgh - if only i'd get an offer!

Oooh come to Edinburgh, its exciting!!

Do you want to do Lit or Lang as your 3rd choice? As the lang course is apparently very similar to the Ling course so there are a lot of cross overs. Lots of people do both though, they just repeat stuff... but then it makes you understand it better I suppose! You're eligible to enter 2nd year English Lang if you've done 1st year Ling, which could be something to consider as then you could take something else in first year then do 2nd year Eng, then you'd still be able to take any of those 3 subjects to honours.

There is a fair bit of sciency stuff at Edinburgh but I don't think you can really study the subject properly without doing so, and it is managable. Just don't panic when you turn up, as in the first few weeks of term you focus on phonology and phonetics so you spend the entire time going ahhh gahhh and stuff learning where all of the sounds come from. Andrew Smith (the lecturer) is a legend and can make any sound on the IPA which is really rare, but its kind of hard if you don't really enjoy that side of linguistics. But it really helps you in the lang acqu/social stuff and just in general. You can't really do ling without knowing it, which is why in 2nd year semester two there is a big focus on phonetics and Andrew Smith pops up again and they stick a camera down his throat to show you where all the sounds are made. If you really want to be ahead of the game I'd try to learn some of the IPA symbols for transcription before you get there and learn the different areas of the mouth used for articulation and production, as I really struggled because it was fairly intensive stuff when you're trying to be a fresher and get drunk every night because the class is at 10am every day! You only do phonetics for about 3 weeks though and then move on to something else.

Reply 15

Mijdge

9

oxymoronic

Yeah Lancaster were pretty generous... I remember at the open day post offers they were like 'we've given you an offer and we want you, so if you don't get the right results on the day just give us a call as we will do all we can to keep you here as we've chosen you'... which I thought was nice, even though I declined their offer! It didn't stop them from sending me post about once a month all the way through until results day, when I recived a good luck card from them to go with the one they'd sent in during my A2s (wtf??) and a note saying that if I had missed my grades to give them a call as they still had a place for me!!! So yeah, Midjde: seriously, look into Lancaster as they have a damn good course and are pretty flexible. I'm sure they were in extra my year too. They also took general studies when I was applying.

I looked at Lancaster but I really didn't want to go. I didn't get that gut reaction I wanted. My English Language courses are pretty linguisticy, it's the main reason I chose the ones I did. And I would go through clearing, but I love Northumbria so much I think I might just stick with English Language. I'm fretting slightly about my job prospects now. I wanted to be a speech therapist (hence applying for Linguistics) but now I don't know whether it'll be an easy ride.

Reply 16

Mijdge

I looked at Lancaster but I really didn't want to go. I didn't get that gut reaction I wanted. My English Language courses are pretty linguisticy, it's the main reason I chose the ones I did.

Ah okay, to be honest I didn't want to go either - was far too small and campusy for me. If I wanted to live in a field I'd have stayed at home (although I'm sure its a very nice university field!) so yeah, I get what you mean about the gut feeling.

What do you think your options are then now? As if your eng lang ones are fairly linguisticy you could be okay- have you compared the modules etc as you might find the courses are identical. Or is it the locations you're not too fussed upon?

Reply 17

Mijdge

9

oxymoronic

Ah okay, to be honest I didn't want to go either - was far too small and campusy for me. If I wanted to live in a field I'd have stayed at home (although I'm sure its a very nice university field!) so yeah, I get what you mean about the gut feeling.

What do you think your options are then now? As if your eng lang ones are fairly linguisticy you could be okay- have you compared the modules etc as you might find the courses are identical. Or is it the locations you're not too fussed upon?

I have compared the modules with the Newcastle and Leeds courses, it's how I found out the linguistic nature of the Northumbria, Sunderland and Sheffield Hallam ones. I am unfortunately stuck on the North-East as a location. There's just something about it.

Reply 18