Research methods in Linguistics

This course provides an overview over common methods in linguistic research involving different kinds of studies (qualitative and quantitative) as well as basic techniques of data collection and analysis. General principles of the scientific method and empirical research will be introduced. Students get to know main methods of data compilation such as observation in linguistic/ethnographic fieldwork, study designs with controlled stimulus, survey techniques such as questionnaires and interviews; and corpus building and mining. For data handling, software-based tools such as Praat for phonological analysis or ELAN for grammatical description of spoken language will be introduced. Data analysis by means of basic descriptive statistics will be explored. Based on the students’ interest, particular techniques can be discussed in more detail with the option of working with actual data from current research projects.