Teaching
SynTeach
Since 2022 I've been involved in a group investigating how syntax is taught and its role in linguistics curricula, along with Laura Bailey (University of Kent), Kirby Conrod (Swarthmore College), and Caitl Light (Loyola University College). Our ultimate goal is to produce recommendations for syntax pedagogy that can be adapted across both undergraduate and graduate teaching, and in program design.
For more information about the SynTeach project see the project website or our OSF repository. You can also subscribe to the project mailing list.
Essentials of Linguistics, 2nd Edition
Along with Catherine Anderson (lead author), Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi, I was involved in creating the 2nd Edition of the online open-access linguistics textbook Essentials of Linguistics. I am the primary author of the chapters on Morphology and Syntax (Chs. 5-6).
"Topic Guides" for Introduction to Linguistics
When teaching Introduction to Linguistics remotely in the 2020-2021 academic year, I created a series of content videos and accompanying "topic guides". Since these represent a considerable investment of time and energy, I decided to make both available online, under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license; the chapters on Morphology and Syntax were adapted in the corresponding chapters of Essentials of Linguistics. Anyone is free to use or adapt them for their own teaching—if this spares anyone work when teaching a similar course, especially anyone employed in a more precarious position than I am, I will be delighted.
- Bjorkman (2021) A collection of topic guides for an introductory course in linguistics. lingbuzz/005885
- Playlist of Introduction to Linguistics Content Videos
- Note: These videos have captions, but the captions were auto-generated and have considerable errors. Time constraints (and the lack of institutional support for ensuring accessibility) prevented me from being able to produce human-corrected captions. The written topic guides were intended to cover all necessary material, partly to ensure this was available to students for whom videos were not accessible for whatever reason.
If you notice any errors or feel any corrections are needed, please don't hesitate to contact me by email.
Word to the Whys Podcast
As a member of Teaching Introduction to Linguistics Community of Practice (TILCoP Canada) I participated in the creation of the Word to the Whys podcast, created as an accompaniment to any Introduction to Linguistics course.
Teaching @ Queen's University
At Queen's I teach in the Linguistics program, which is housed in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. I've taught the following courses at Queen's:
- Introduction to Linguistics (LING 100)
- Linguistic Diversity and Identity (LLCU 110)
- Canadian English (LING 202)
- Phonology (LING 320)
- Morphology (LING 330)
- Syntax (LING 340)
- Historical Linguistics (LING 350)
- Comparative Morphosyntax (LING 360)
- Linguistic Analysis and Argumentation (LING 400)
- Advanced Morphosyntax (LING 435)
If you're interested in seeing syllabi or materials for any of these courses, please send me an email.
Mini-courses
2023 CLA Crash Course
In June 2023 I taught a half-day "crash course" associated with the Canadian Linguistics Association's annual meeting, aimed at graduate students.
2022 V-NYI Morphology
In July 2022 I co-taught a one-week Introduction to Morphology mini course with Laura Kalin, as part of the Virtual NYI Global Institute of Cultural, Cognitive, and Linguistic Studies.
EGG 2014 (University of Debrecen)
In 2014 I taught two courses at the European Generative Grammar summer school, at the University of Debrecen.
- The Representation of Aspect
- Topic: the relationship between viewpoint aspect and situation aspect, their syntactic representation in terms of features, and how that representation can interact with other syntactic phenomena such as case assignment.
- Handouts:
- Directions of Agree (co-taught with Hedde Zeijlstra)