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Linguistics Courses
101 People and Their Language (SB) (both sem) Relatively non-technical introduction to study of human language: the wealth of unconscious knowledge that every user of a language has about its sounds, word structure, sentence structure, meaning, and its use in society. Child language acquisition, language and brain, and the language change. Note: students intending to pursue further work in Linguistics are encouraged to start with LING 201 rather than 101. 113 Language and Diversity in the U.S. (SBD) (2nd sem) Social and cultural diversity in the U.S. through the lens of language. Language uses of past and present immigrant populations; bilingualism, cultural assimilation, the English-only movement. Language and Native Americans; classification of the language families of native North America, oral vs. written literature, the role of language in maintaining a distinct culture. Varieties of English spoken in the U.S.; differences reflecting region, class, education, ethnicity, and race. 201 Introduction to Linguistic Theory (R2) (both sem) Introduction to the basic methodology and results of modern linguistics. Focus on developing, evaluating, and improving hypotheses concerning the structure and acquisition of the language user's unconscious linguistic knowledge. Emphasis on sentence structure (syntax), secondarily on sound structure (phonology), word structure (morphology), and meaning (semantics). 397A Special Topics: English Historical Syntax and Morphology (not offered '00-'01) Fulfills Junior Year Writing requirement. An introduction to changes in the morphology and syntax of English, insofar as these can be explored without knowledge of the medieval language. Includes the regular reading of (largely prose) texts of gradually increasing age, and analysis of the language of the texts as exemplifying various changes. Prerequisites: LING 201, 397B or 401; LING 505 recommended. 397B Special Topics: Discourse Analysis (not offered '00-01) The study of discourse, approached from a variety of perspectives (deriving from linguistics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, communications theory, artificial intelligence, and other disciplines). Several of these approaches examined, looking at their assumptions, methodologies and goals, and at samples of research carried out within these approaches. Topics include the discourse of advertising, conversational analysis and style, interactive sociolinguistics, politeness. No prior knowledge of linguistics assumed. 401 Introduction to Syntax (both sem) Introduction to syntactic theory, with implications for universal grammar and grammatical theory in general. Topics include theories of phrase structure, the form and functioning of transformations, grammatical relations, anaphora and control, word order problems, universals of grammar, relations between grammatical theory and learnability, language acquisition. Prerequisite: LING 201 or consent of instructor. 402 Speech Sounds and Structure (1st sem) The character of sound patterning in language; the kinds of sounds that serve as elements of a linguistic pattern; regularities found in the shape of words; flow of speech; rules and representations. How the theory of phonology contributes to our understanding of human language capacity. Skill at phonological analysis developed by working out problems of increasing complexity. 404 Field Methods (2nd sem) Provides hands-on experience in linguistic analysis and theory construction. Students elicit language data from the speaker of an unfamiliar language, both as a group and individually. Under the guidance of the instructor, analysis of the syntax and phonology of the language constructed in class. Prerequisite: LING 201 or 401 or 402 or consent of instructor. 409 Formal Foundations of Linguistic Theory (1st sem) Introduction to some basic mathematical concepts and techniques central to linguistic theory and related disciplines. Set theory, logic and formal systems, modern algebra, automata theory, and model theory. No prior mathematics assumed. Not open to math majors. Prerequisite: LING 201 or 601 or consent of instructor. 410 Introduction to Semantics (2nd sem) The investigation of meaning from a linguistic, philosophical, and psychological point of view. How people know the meanings of words and sentences of their language. How semantics relate to syntax on the one hand and logic, mental representations, and the world on the other. The relationship between meaning and form in natural language, and between meaning and thought. How meanings are represented in the brain, and how semantic knowledge is acquired by a child. Prerequisite: LING 201. 411 Introduction to Psycholinguistics (2nd sem) How a child acquires language; aspects of a child's growing mental powers. Stresses the child's use of a systematic linguistic structure to produce creative sentences. Acquisition of language (primarily syntactic and semantic) from the one-word stage through complex utterances. Linguistic ability as an inborn capacity. Recent discoveries in the area of complex syntax. Prerequisite: 201 or consent of instructor. 412 Language Processing and the Brain rolinguistics, with emphasis on techniques and results of recent theoretical and experimental work, the mental representation and processing of language. Primary focus on comprehension, and the biological basis of language, relation of linguistic capacity to brain structure and at most limited discussion of language production and language acquisition. Prerequisite: LING 201 or consent of instructor. 414 Introductory Phonetics for Linguists (1st sem) Fulfills Junior Year Writing requirement in 2000-2001. Rudiments of articulatory and acoustic phonetics, both practical and theoretical. Topics include basic anatomy of the speech organs, basic speech sound-producing mechanisms, acoustic correlates of speech sounds. Students practice producing and recognizing/transcribing many types of speech and the acoustic correlates of speech sounds. Should be taken concurrently with LING 402. 503 Intermediate Syntax (2nd sem) The common properties underlying the syntactic principles of all human languages. How to construct and evaluate theories of syntactic phenomena such as phrase structure, grammatical relations, case, agreement, and long distance syntactic dependencies. 505 Introduction to Historical Linguistics (not offered '00-'01) Survey of the goals, methods, and results of research into the history and prehistory of languages; theories of the neo-grammarians, structuralists, and gener-ativists. Focus on change, reconstruction, and variation; examples from the Indo-European language family. For those with a background in phonology; may appeal to those in anthropology, sociology, classics, and modern languages. Prerequisite: LING 201. Linguistics
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