My Experience With SLIYS (Summer Linguistic Institute for Youth Scholars)

I got a oppurtunity to attend the Ohio State Universities SLIYS summer program which is a virtual lingustic program that teaches skills from all fields of lingustics. This includes phonetics, morphology, socioloingustics, semantics and much more. At the end of the program, I also got to have a illication session with a native russian speaker.

Our first exploration into language’s structure was through phonetics, the study of speech sound production and use. I never would have guessed the sheer number of consonants and vowels that exist throughout the world's languages, and I learned from linguistic scholars how the International Phonetic Alphabet can be used to transcribe these sounds. This taught me to be more aware of the sounds in the languages around me and understand that variation and accent are perfectly natural.

We moved on to the study of morphology and how individual languages are composed. Learning to break down a language into smaller morphemic units, prefixes, roots, and suffixes helped me see that even long and complex words still make sense in their structures. Complementing morphology, syntax explores sentence construction shows how these smaller word units are pieced together into meaningful sentences. It astounded me to learn how vastly languages differ in their syntax while still conveying more or less the same ideas.

We discussed the influence of context through sociolinguistics, which studies how language changes with context, culture, location, and social situation. The course showed me that there isn’t a single "correct" form of a language and that different dialects are valuable as a testament to their unique speaker communities. We also examined linguistic history and observed how languages have changed over time, evolving into what they are today while still retaining traces of one another.

Another interesting subject we explored was semantics, the study of meaning in language and how the meanings of words and sentences vary depending on context. We also learned about pragmatics—how language is used in practice, and how context, facial expressions, and verbal cues influence how a sentence should be interpreted. One of the many highlights of SLIYS was participating in language elicitations. During one session, my group and I explored the Russian language by identifying patterns with the help of a native Russian speaker. Instead of relying on dictionaries or software to tell us about the structure and sounds of Russian, we made hypotheses, asked strategic questions, and interpreted the speaker’s responses.

Working as a team, we tested hypotheses about Russian phonetics and morphology. This activity gave us a practical application of everything we had learned throughout the week and offered insight into what linguists do when documenting and analyzing a new language. By the end of SLIYS, I had gained a greatly enhanced appreciation for the nature and complexity of language, and I would highly recommend the experience to any high school student with even a vague interest in the subject. SLIYS taught me about language through the lenses of science, history, culture, and communication, and it certainly sparked my interest in learning more about this endlessly fascinating field.