Linguistics Courses

Linguistics | Courses | Faculty

(All courses carry 3 credits unless otherwise noted.)

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. (SBU) (not offered '02-'03)

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).

392A Seminar: The Dream of a Perfect Language (1st sem)

Examines artificial languages and confronts them with visions of real languages found in the work of Noam Chomsky. Covers 17th-century concept calculi, Esperanto, the Predicate Calculus, and poetry trying to go beyond the limited resources of ordinary language. Prerequisite: LING 201.

393A Seminar: Language Production
(2nd sem)

How speakers use the grammar of their native language to produce sentences. How complex thought/messages are conveyed. Psycholinguistic theories of language production, highlighting such topics as: why some speech errors are common and others exceedingly rare. How utterances prosodically are encoded. How words are assessed and syntactically structured. What the relation is between language and thought. Prerequisite: LING 201.

397A Special Topics: English Historical Syntax and Morphology (2nd sem)

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 (2nd sem) (not offered '02-'03)

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. Honors option may be available. 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) 4 cr

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 (not offered '02-'03)

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.

411 Introduction to Psycholinguistics (2nd sem) 4 cr

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 (1st sem)

Introduction to psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, 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
4 cr

Fundamentals of articulatory and acoustic phonetics, with a particular emphasis on the application of experimental results to theoretical problems in phonetics and phonology. Topics also include the components of models of speaking and listening, from the feature up to the phrase. Students carry out experiments investigating aspects of speaking or listening in the phonetics laboratory.

494A Seminar: Language Universals and Language Typology (1st sem)

Focus on syntactic and morphological differences, including word order, ways of forming questions and relative clauses, types of passives, applicatives, case, agreement, and clitics. Prerequisite: LING 201. LING 401 and 402 recommended.

497A Seminar: Acquisition of Phonology (2nd sem)

Reviews existing literature on the learning of phonology. Students conduct research on raw data. Focus on using the tools of theoretical phonology to analyze data from child pronunciations. Attention also given to second language phonology and the development of phonological perception. Prerequisite: LING 201 or 402 (recommended).

501 Linguistic Theory and Grammar of English (2nd sem)

Introduction to the central ideas of theoretical linguistics and their potential influence on language teaching and English language arts. Introduction to phonology, syntax, and semantics, and the cultural, political, economic and social environments within which a language is acquired. Basic facts about the patterns of English and how the scientific analysis of languages reveals a new perspective on how children learn their native language.

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 (2nd sem)

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.

510 Introduction to Semantics (2nd sem)
4 cr

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.

595A Seminar: Language Patterns of African-American English (1st sem)

Current issues in the study of African-American Vernacular English. Recent literature on theoretical topics, such as the syntax and semantics of aspect, negative concord, inversion phenomena, the auxiliary system, and intonation patterns. The relevance of AAVE research for a general typology of human languages, and of current linguistic research to social issues such as the teaching of reading and Standard English to AAVE speakers and the diagnosis of communication disorders in speakers of AAVE. Prerequisite: basic knowledge of linguistics. Tutorials available for students who have not completed an introductory course in syntax or semantics.

Linguistics | Courses | Faculty