UWYO Linguistic Anthropology Spring 2018

I enjoyed all of the topics in this course, but found a few topics especially interesting because they relate to me personally. Having a visual impairment, nonverbal language is one that I am not fluent in. Nonverbal language includes facial expressions, hand gestures, and body movement. While some movements are large and easy to read, such as frantic waving or stomping, many facial expressions or other gestures are much more subtle, such as a brief nod, wink, or glare. For me, I must be very close to someone to read these subtleties; otherwise I may be oblivious to them. Further, projecting my own body language to communicate with someone else nonverbally is problematic, as I cannot make direct eye contact, which is a key element of communication. Since I cannot observe social behavior, I have not entirely mastered the language to effectively communicate with it. I also liked the topics of generalization and categorization because I can see it in action with my g...

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HGz0vc8Pu7nsUw4DmGLbdmnSp6M-KN3b9s10L8CU1U0/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Owj5kJznUsxTByuMxPgf-PtdeD-YQ-c2YQ_QC0xM-No/edit?usp=sharing 

Here is my presentation for my papers on the Maori language

Here's a link to the Google Slides associated with my power-point.

Something I find interesting when studying linguistics are the changes in word pronunciation over time. My favorite example of this phenomenon is Grimm’s law, which is a systematic formulation which correlates between Germanic and other Indo-European languages. (Encyclopedia Britannica) Grimm’s law serves as a method of decoding the pronunciation of words based on the languages. For example, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, Grimm’s law shows us that the originally voiced “bh”, “dh”, “gh” had become the English “b”, “d”, “g”. In this example the previously voiced “h” sound began to be left off or otherwise unvoiced in areas where English developed. The consistency of these types of formulas within Grimm’s law supports the idea that both vowel and consonant sound shifts are a normal phenomenon in language and not a random mispronunciation of a handful of words. I first encountered Grimm’s law while studying Medieval Literature at the University of Wyoming. During tha...