This was the first course I took in the MA program before I was even admitted. It was definitely a challenge to take this course after more than a decade outside of school. I, of course, have to make my life difficult and decided to take what is usually one of the last courses for students in the linguistics program. Dr. Bing encouraged me to stick with it when I doubted myself at the beginning. I learned more than just phonology that semester, I learned how to be a grad student.
I prepared this presentation before the paper was due and Dr. Bing let me know that while the information was interesting, it was too historical without enough emphasis on the phonology of the language. Oh no! I had to completely scrap a huge chunk of my paper. I learned from this that I should have saved it to possibly use for something else, but at least I still have the presentation of the work I did on the history of Italian languages. The picture on the last slide is the view from the balcony of my house when I lived in La Maddalena, the small island between Sardinia and Corsica.
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Open in new tab This is the paper that I ended up with after cutting what had been really the bulk of my argument. I had also ordered a book from Italy on Maddalenino that did not arrive until after the course was done. I ended up relying heavily on one researcher who had studied Gallurese, another Sardinian dialect. Thank goodness for Renzo De Martino! Also, this was the first time I had even heard of APA style and tried to do all the formatting at the end. Not a good idea. Another lesson I learned in this class.
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I actually did the Phonetic Fieldwork Assignment in the next course I took, General Linguistics. This course was more of a survey course, so I did not have many projects to complete. Being my first experience with fieldwork, I was so nervous to have to solicit participation from someone in order to complete it. Helen was a great subject and eager to help.
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