Graduate CoursesSee below for descriptions of all linguistics courses, and be
sure to check the the roster for the
official and most up-to-date list of current
offerings and room assignments and the timetable for
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All Graduate Linguistics Course Descriptions
For a complete list of course descriptions, see The Register.
For a list of general undergraduate course requirements fulfilled by linguistics
courses, see this table. LING 501: Survey SociolinguisticsSpeech communities as a focus for the understanding of language evolution and change: language variation in time and space. The relationship between language structure and language use; between language change and social change. Populations as differentiated by age, sex, social class, race, and ethnicity, and the relationship of these factors to linguistic differentiation. LING 502 (LING 202): Introduction to Field LinguisticsInstruction and practice in primary linguistic research, combining study of reference materials and work with native-speakers. The emphasis will be on quickly building a grammatical sketch and a lexicon adequate to support further research. Each student will do a term project investigating some phenomenon of general interest. LING 503 (LING 330): Sound Structure of LanguageAn introduction to articulatory and acoustic phonetics; phonetic transcription; basic concepts and methods of phonological analysis. Term project required.
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Spring 2007 LING 506: Dynamics of LanguageTBA
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Spring 2007 LING 510: Introduction to Historical and Comparative LinguisticsSynchronic and diachronic systems. Analogic processes. Semantic change. Effects of contact. Internal reconstruction. Comparative method and reconstruction.
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Fall 2007 LING 519 (LING 319): Topics in Dravidian LanguagesAfter an overview of the Dravidian family as a whole (languages, speakers, history of research), and a general structural description on one particular language (Tamil or Kannada), this course will then focus on a number of topics of crucial interest in the field. Most recently, this has been grammaticalization, i.e. how languages recruit and utilize lexical material as grammatical morphemes over time. After a general review of this topic, grammaticalization in Dravidian in particular will be examined, especially how this works in highly diglossic languages such as Tamil. Students will write a paper on a topic of their own theoretical interest, using data from a selected Dravidian language, or a language with similar problems. LING 520: Introduction to PhoneticsNo description available.
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Fall 2007 LING 521: Introduction to Phonetics IINo description available.
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Spring 2007 LING 525 (CIS 558): Computer Analysis and Modeling of Biological Signals and SystemsA hands-on signal and image processing course for non-EE graduate students needing these skills. We will go through all the fundamentals of signal and image processing using computer exercises developed in MATLAB. Examples will be drawn from speech analysis and synthesis, computer vision, and biological modeling. LING 530: Phonology IFirst half of a year-long introduction to the formal study of phonology. Basic concepts in articulatory phonetics; the distribution of sounds (phonemes and allophones); underlying and surface forms, and how to relate them using both ordered-rule and surface-constraint approaches. The survey of theoretical topics in this term includes distinctive features (context, organization, underspecification); the autosegmental representation of tone; and the theory of phonological domains and their interaction with morphological and syntactic constituency. Emphasizes hands-on analysis of a wide range of data.
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Fall 2007 LING 531: Phonology IISecond half of a year-long introduction; continues LING 530. Topics to be surveyed include syllable structure and moraic theory; the prosodic hierarchy; the properties and representation of geminates; templatic and prosodic morphology; reduplication and emergence of the unmarked; and metrical phonology (properties of stress, foot typology, and issues of constituency). Emphasizes hands-on analysis of a wide range of data.
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Spring 2007 LING 535: Workshop in Phonetics/PhonologyThis course is intended for students who have had at least one year of graduate-level phonological theory and are interested in developing a research paper on a particular topic in phonology. Each student will present his or her topic several times during the semester as the analysis develops, with feedback from the instructors and other students to improve the organization and content of the analysis. The goal is an end product appropriate for delivery at a national conference or submission to a journal.
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Fall 2005 LING 538: Computational Method in Linguistic ResearchNo description available.
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Fall 2005 LING 540 (SAST540): Language PolicyThis course examines the sociolinguistic context of modern multilingual states and the impact of their linguistic policies on the cultural identity of linguistic minorities. In the United States, the history of multilingualism will be examined, tracing the growth of linguistic assimilationism and the rebirth of assertive bilingualism, and comparing it with policies of other multilingual societies in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Attention is paid to typological aspects of bilingualism, controversies surrounding intelligence and multilingualism, as well as attitudes toward language loyalty and ethno-linguistic identity in various societies. Special cultural factors such as the role of religion, immigrational recency, literacy, socio-economic status, race, educational level and ethnic pride will be surveyed in terms of their impact on maintenance and/or assimilation. Students will undertake a term project examining some aspect of the above topics in a real or historical community of their preference. LING 545 (COGS 501; PSYC 501): Math Foundations of Language Communication ILING 546 (COGS 502; PSYC 502): Math Foundations of Language Communication IILING 548: Proof Theoretic Foundations of Linguistic StructureThis course covers the fundamentals of proof theory and logic as they apply to linguistics. The notion of a well-formed derivation is fundamental to all flavors of formal linguistics and all sub-disciplines of linguistics-phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. It rests, ultimately, on axiomatic systems developed by logicians to encode the process of valid formal reasoning. We will place a particular emphasis on constructive methods and, where appropriate, develop connections with parsing theory, automatic theorem proving and computational semantics. Time permitting, we will consider some introductory topics in substructural logic-systems that encode some proper sub-part of first order logic. These systems have proven very important in planning, theorem proving, dynamic logic and computational linguistics. The course is intended as a preparation for Linguistics 553 (Formal Semantics I). It includes a review of the propositional and predicate calculus before introducing tableaux and resolution systems, unification, axiomatic systems, natural deduction and sequent calculi. The latter two systems are particularly relevant for grammar formalisms like phrase structure grammars, TAGs and Categorial Grammar.
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Fall 2007
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Fall 2006
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Fall 2005 LING 549 (CSE 477): Mathematical Techniques in Natural Language ProcessingBasic concepts of set theory, relations and functions, properties of relations. Basic concepts of algebra. Grammars, languages, and automata-finite state grammars, regular expressions, finite state transducers, context-free grammars and pushdown automata. Context-sensitive grammars- string context sensitivity and structural context-sensitivity. Mildly context-sensitive grammars. Turingmachines. Grammars ad deductive systems, parsing as deduction. Stochastic grammars. The course will deal with these topics in a very basic and introductory manner, i.e., the key ideas of the proofs and not detailed proofs will be presented. More importantly, throughout the course plenty of linguistic examples to bring out the linguistic relevance of these topics will be discussed.
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Fall 2007
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Fall 2006
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Fall 2005 LING 550: Syntax IA general introduction at the graduate level to the analysis of sentence structure. The approach taken is that of contemporary generative-transformational grammar.
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Fall 2007
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Fall 2006 LING 551: Syntax IIThe second half of a year-long introduction to the formal study of natural language syntax. Topics to be covered include grammatical architecture; derivational versus representational statement of syntactic principles; movement and locality; the interface of syntax and semantics; argument structure; and other topics. The emphasis is on reading primary literature and discussing theoretical approaches, along with detailed case-studies of specific syntactic phenomena in different languages.
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Spring 2007 LING 553: Formal Semantics ILinguistics 553 will cover those elements of logic that are fundamental to semantic theory. The course will treat basic set theory, propositional logic (formulas, truth-functional connectives, truth tables), predicate logic (quantification, interpretation relative to a model) and natural inference. Given these foundations, we will then cover intensional logic and type theory. The formal discussion will be highlighted with semantic treatments of some natural language phenomena (Montague's analysis of a fragment of English, definite descriptions, generalized quantifiers, reference in opaque contexts, perception verbs).
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Spring 2007 LING 554: Formal Semantics IIAn introduction to those aspects of mathematics relevant for the formal analysis of linguistic meaning. Emphasis is laid on the following areas: semantic automata, type theory, combinatory logic, the lambda calculus, proof theory, the lambeck calculus and update logic.
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Fall 2005 LING 556: Historical SyntaxIntroduction to the study of the syntax of languages attested only in historical corpora. The course will cover methods and results in the grammatical description of such languages and in the diachronic study of syntactic change.
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Fall 2007 LING 560: The Study of the Speech Community: Field MethodsFor students who plan to carry out research in the speech community. Techniques and theory derived from sociolinguistic studies will be used to define neighborhoods, enter the community, analyze social networks, and obtain tape-recorded data from face-to-face interviews. Students will work in groups and study a single city block.
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Spring 2007
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Fall 2006 LING 562: Quantitative Study of Linguistic VariationMultivariate analysis of data gathered in continuing research in the speech community; variable rule analysis and use of Cedergren/Sankoff program; instrumental analysis of speech signal; experimental techniques for study of subjective correlates of linguistic boundaries.
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Fall 2007
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Fall 2005 LING 563: Sound Change in ProgressThe study of current sound changes in the speech community through instrumental means. Causes of linguistic diversity and consequences for speech recognition. LING 568: Dialect GeographyThe principles, practices and findings of dialect geography from the nineteenth century to the present. Computational organization of dialect data. The study of current dialect differentiation in American English and other areas. LING 570 (PSYC607, PSYC737): Developmental PsycholinguisticsThis course is an introduction, at the graduate level, to developmental psycho-linguistics with special emphasis on the acquisition of argument structure, phrase structure, the analysis of the input data to the learner, developmental sequences and the acquisition of morphology. LING 590: Linguistic Pragmatics IThis course is the first of a two-term introduction to linguistic pragmatics, the branch of linguistics whose goal is to provide a formal characterization of discourse competence, i.e. of what people know when they "know" how to use (a) language. Among the topics investigated are: The Cooperative Principle, conversational and conventional implicature, speech acts, reference, and presupposition.
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Spring 2007 LING 591: Linguistic Pragmatics IIThis course is the second of a two-term introduction to linguistic pragmatics. Among the topics investigated are: given/new information, definiteness/ indefiniteness, topic/comment, Centering Theory, discourse structure, and the functions of syntax. LING 603: Topics in PhonologyTopics are chosen from such areas as featural representations; syllable theory; metrical structure; tonal phonology; prosodic morphology; interaction of phonology with syntax and morphology.
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Fall 2006 LING 604: Topics in Discourse AnalysisSelected topics in discourse and pragmatics, e.g. reference, presupposition, functions of syntax. LING 610: HittiteSelected topics either in Indo-European comparative linguistics or in historical and comparative method.
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Fall 2006
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Fall 2005 LING 615: Comparative Indo-European GrammarA survey of phonology and grammar of major ancient Indo-European languages and the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European. A knowledge of at least one ancient Indo-European language is required. LING 620: Topics in ProsodyNo description available.
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Spring 2007 LING 630: Seminar in MorphologyReadings in modern morphological theory and evaluation of hypotheses in the light of synchronic and diachronic evidence from various languages.
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Fall 2006 LING 640: Formal Semantics and Mathematical LinguisticsAdvanced readings in formal semantics and discrete and continuous models of linguistic behavior. LING 650: Topics in Natural Language SyntaxDetailed study of topics in syntax and semantics, e.g., pronominalization, negation, complementation. Topics vary from term to term.
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Spring 2007
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Fall 2005 LING 653: Topics in the Syntax-Semantics InterfaceTopics in the Syntax-Semantics Interface
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Fall 2007
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Fall 2006
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Fall 2005 LING 656: Seminar in Historical SyntaxThis course analyzes several well documented syntactic changes in the European languages with the tools of modern grammatical and quantitative analysis. The focus is on the competition between forms and systems as in the loss of the verb-second constraint in English and French and the competition between head initial and head final word orders in the several West Germanic languages. LING 660: Research Seminar in SociolinguisticsStudents approaching the dissertation level will explore with faculty frontier areas of research on linguistic change and variation. Topics addressed in recent years include: experimental investigation of the reliability of syntactic judgments; the development of TMA systems in creoles; transmission of linguistic change across generations. The course may be audited by those who have finished their course work or taken for credit in more than one year.
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Spring 2007 LING 671 (SAST 771): Indian GrammariansA survey of the methods of Indian grammarians, principally Panini; comparisons with other approaches. |
