LING 1100a, Language: Introduction to Linguistics  Claire Bowern

This is a course about language as a window into the human mind and language as glue in human society. Nature, nurture, or both? Linguistics is a science that addresses this puzzle for human language. Language is one of the most complex of human behaviors, but it comes to us without effort. Language is common to all societies and is typically acquired without explicit instruction. Human languages vary within highly specific parameters. The conventions of speech communities exhibit variation and change over time within the confines of universal grammar, part of our biological endowment. The properties of universal grammar are discovered through the careful study of the structures of individual languages and comparison across languages. This course introduces analytical methods that are used to understand this fundamental aspect of human knowledge. In this introductory course students learn about the principles that underly all human languages, and what makes language special. We study language sounds, how words are formed, how humans compute meaning, as well as language in society, language change, and linguistic diversity.  SO  0 Course cr
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

LING 1120a, Language and Society  Claire Bowern

Introduction to language change and language history. How do people use language, and how does that lead to language change over time: sound change, analogy, syntactic and semantic change, borrowing. Techniques for recovering earlier linguistic stages: philology, internal reconstruction, the comparative method. The role of language contact in language change. Evidence from language in prehistory (doing archaeology with language); language change in individuals, and language in society.  WR, HU, SO
MW 1:05pm-2:20pm

LING 1140a / EGYP 1100a, Introduction to Classical Hieroglyphic Egyptian I  John Darnell

Introduction to the language of ancient pharaonic Egypt (Middle Egyptian) and its hieroglyphic writing system, with short historical, literary, and religious texts. Grammatical analysis with exercises in reading, translation, and composition.  L1
TTh 9am-10:15am

LING 1179a / EDST 1237a / PSYC 3317a, Language and Mind  Maria Pinango

The structure of linguistic knowledge and how it is used during communication. The principles that guide the acquisition of this system by children learning their first language, by children learning language in unusual circumstances (heritage speakers, sign languages) and adults learning a second language, bilingual speakers. The processing of language in real-time. Psychological traits that impact language learning and language use.   SO  RP  0 Course cr
TTh 2:35pm-3:50pm

LING 1240b / EGYP 1200b, Introduction to Classical Hieroglyphic Egyptian II  Staff

Continuation of EGYP 1100. Prerequisite: EGYP 1100.  L2
MW 9am-10:15am

* LING 1500b / ENGL 3501b, Old English  Emily Thornbury

An introduction to the language, literature, and culture of earliest England. A selection of both major and less-studied works of prose and verse, including charms, saints' lives, meditations on loss, a dream vision, and heroic verse, which are read in the original Old English. No prior knowledge of Old English is expected.  WR, HU
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

LING 2200a / PSYC 3318a, Phonetics I  Jason Shaw

Each spoken language composes words using a relatively small number of speech sounds, a subset of the much larger set of possible human speech sounds. This course introduces tools to describe the complete set of speech sounds found in the world's spoken languages. It covers the articulatory organs involved in speech production and the acoustic structure of the resulting sounds. Students learn how to transcribe sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet, including different varieties of English and languages around the world. The course also introduces sociophonetics, how variation in sound patterns can convey social meaning within a community, speech perception, and sound change.   SO  0 Course cr
TTh 2:35pm-3:50pm

LING 2270a / PSYC 3327a, Language and Computation I  Tom McCoy

This course introduces the design and analysis of computational models of language. There are many properties of language that make it challenging to handle computationally: First, language is ambiguous - a given word or sentence can have many possible meanings. Second, our linguistic experience is sparse - many aspects of language (e.g., certain sentence structures) occur very rarely, posing a challenge for computational systems that learn from data. Third, language has an enormous amount of hidden structure - words and other linguistic units can have complex relationships with each other that are not apparent on the surface. In this course, we explore the computational approaches that can overcome these challenges. Topics include finite state tools, neural networks, Bayesian approaches, computational morphology and phonology, grammar and parsing, lexical semantics, and the use of linguistic models in applied problems. Prerequisite: prior programming experience or permission of instructor.  QR, SO
TTh 9am-10:15am

LING 2430a / CGSC 243 / CGSC 2430a, Dynamics of Speech  Jason Shaw

Systems that change over time, from particles to climates to stock markets, are often well described as Dynamical Systems. Speech, like many aspects of human behavior, involve action and perception components, which are mediated and related by the central nervous system. Each of these components unfolds over time according to laws, which can be formulated using dynamical systems theory. This class provides an introduction to the types of dynamical systems that have been proposed to describe and explain human speech behavior, including (1) articulatory kinematics, i.e., the movements of speech organs such as the tongue, lips, vocal folds, etc., (2) neural activity governing intention and control, and (3) auditory transduction and perception of speech sound waves.  The course makes use of key concepts from calculus, particularly differential equations. Review of the necessary math will be provided in class. Most homework assignments involve light coding in the Matlab environment. No previous experience with Matlab is required; however, we expect students to have some familiarity with basic coding concepts (functions, loops, variables, matrices). Please feel free to reach out to us if you have questions about preparation.  SO
TTh 1:05pm-2:20pm

LING 2530a, Syntax I  Raffaella Zanuttini

If you knew all the words of a language, would you be able to speak that language? No, because you’d still need to know how to put the words together to form all and only the grammatical sentences of that language. This course focuses on the principles of our mental grammar that determine how words are put together to form sentences. Some of these principles are shared by all languages, some differ from language to language. The interplay of the principles that are shared and those that are distinct allows us to understand how languages can be very similar and yet also very different at the same time. This course is mainly an introduction to syntactic theory: it introduces the questions that the field asks, the methodology it employs, some of the main generalizations that have been drawn and results that have been achieved. Secondarily, this course is also an introduction to scientific theorizing: what it means to construct a scientific theory, how to test it, and how to choose among competing theories.  SO  0 Course cr
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

LING 2630a, Semantics I  Simon Charlow

Introduction to truth-conditional compositional semantics. Set theory, first- and higher-order logic, and the lambda calculus as they relate to the study of natural language meaning. Some attention to analyzing the meanings of tense/aspect markers, adverbs, and modals. Prerequisites: One course in linguistics, philosophy of language, logic, computer science or permission of instructor.  QR, SO  0 Course cr
MW 9am-10:15am

* LING 2759a / CGSC 375 / CGSC 3750a / PSYC 3375a, Linguistic Meaning and Conceptual Structure  Maria Pinango

The meaning of a word or sentence is something in the human mind that has specific properties: it can be expressed (written/signed/spoken forms); it can be combined with other meanings; its expression is not language dependent; it connects with the world; it serves as a vehicle for inference; and it is hidden from awareness. The course explores these properties in some detail and, in the process, provides the students with technical vocabulary and analytical tools to further investigate them. The course is thus intended for those students interested in undertaking a research project on the structure of meaning. the nature of lexico-conceptual structure, that is, the structure of concepts which we refer to as “word meanings”, and how they may be combined through linguistic and non-linguistic means. Its ultimate objective is to bridge models of conceptual structure and models of linguistic semantic composition,  identify their respective strengths and weaknesses and explore some of the fundamental questions that any theory of linguistic meaning composition must answer. Evidence discussed will emerge from naturalistic, introspectional, and experimental methodologies.  Prerequisites: LING 110, CGSC 110, LING 217, or LING 263.  SO
MW 2:35pm-3:50pm

* LING 3120a, Historical Linguistics II  Claire Bowern

How languages change, how we study change, and how language relates to other areas of society. Applications of historical linguistics to the study of the past (e.g. in linguistic paleontology); quantitative approaches to language change, signed language linguistic change. This class builds on material introduced in Historical Linguistics I. Prerequisite: LING 2120 Historical Linguistics I or permission of instructor.  WR, HU, SO
T 9:25am-11:20am

* LING 3350a, Phonology II  Natalie Weber

Topics in the architecture of a theory of sound structure. Motivations for replacing a system of ordered rules with a system of ranked constraints. Optimality theory: universals, violability, constraint types and their interactions. Interaction of phonology and morphology, as well as the relationship of phonological theory to language acquisition and learnability. Opacity, lexical phonology, and serial versions of optimality theory. Prerequisite: LING 232 or permission of instructor.  SO  RP
MW 1:05pm-2:20pm

LING 3610a / CGSC 3610a / PSYC 163 / PSYC 3470a, Language Acquisition  Athulya Aravind

The development of communication and language in children from birth to adolescence. Preverbal communication, lexical learning, morphological and syntactic development, phonological perception and production, the acquisition of pragmatic and communicative competence, and the relation of these skills to literacy.  SO
Th 9:25am-11:20am

LING 3630a / CGSC 363 / CGSC 3630a, Computational Models of Syntax  Robert Frank

Computational and mathematical approaches to natural language syntax. The course explores formal expressiveness and fit with linguistic properties. Grammatical systems studied will include categorial, tree-adjoining, dependency, minimalist and multiple context-free grammars. Topics may also include parsing complexity, algorithms for grammar learning, and applications to natural-language processing systems.  Prerequisite: LING 224 or CPSC 460, or permission of instructor.  SO
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

* LING 3960a / LING 7960a, Semantic Investigations in an Unfamiliar Language  Veneeta Dayal

This course introduces students to semantic fieldwork. It chooses a language that is likely not known to any student in the class and has no substantive semantic literature. Students are introduced to a phenomenon in the language on which there is some syntactic literature, either in that language or in one or more related language. This provides a starting point for students to articulate questions to investigate that are primarily semantic nature. Working with a native speaker consultant, students elicit data that answer these initial questions but very likely lead to further questions to investigate. To keep the elicitation focused, these investigations are restricted to topics related to the primary phenomenon discussed, while allowing some margin for individual interests. In addition to the syntactic and semantic literature on the chosen topic or topics, students also read material on fieldwork methodologies for linguistics generally as well as those specifically for semantics. Students work in small groups to fulfill part of the requirements. The language to be investigated is Indonesian. The topic that we will focus on is the morpho-syntax and semantics of number distinctions. Prerequisites: LING 253, LING 263 or permission of the instructor  SO
M 9:25am-11:20am

* LING 4710a, Special Projects  Jason Shaw

Special projects set up by students with the help of a faculty adviser and the director of undergraduate studies to cover material not otherwise offered by the department. The project must terminate with at least a term paper or its equivalent and must have the approval of the director of undergraduate studies. Only one term may be offered toward the major; two terms may be offered toward the bachelor's degree.
HTBA

* LING 4900a / PSYC 3372a, Research Methods in Linguistics  Robert Frank

Development of skills in linguistics research, writing, and presentation. Choosing a research area, identifying good research questions, developing hypotheses, and presenting ideas clearly and effectively, both orally and in writing; methodological issues; the balance between building on existing literature and making a novel contribution. Prepares for the writing of the senior essay.
W 4pm-5:55pm