This is a seminar on the acquisition of a first language by children. We will discuss the acquisition of the meanings of words and sentences, and the pragmatic and social interpretation of sentences in context. We will also consider how language relates to other cognitive systems and to human social reasoning. Particular emphasis will be placed on discovering the mechanisms children possess that enable them to learn and use language.

Speech 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.

The 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.

Second 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.

An introduction to phonetics and phonology. Topics include articulatory phonetics (the anatomy of the vocal tract; how speech sounds are produced); transcription (conventions for representing the sounds of the world's languages); classification (how speech sounds are classified and represented cognitively through distinctive features); phonology (the grammar of speech sounds in various languages: their patterning and interaction) and syllable structure and its role in phonology.

This is a methodology course, which focuses on how to conduct phonetics research using very large speech corpora. Topics include scripting and statistical techniques, automatic phonetic analysis, integration of speech technology in phonetics studies, variation and invariability in large speech corpora, and revisiting classic phonetic and phonological problems from the perspective of corpus phonetics.

This course continues the introduction to Experiments in the study of meaning in natural language from LING 455. A large focus will be practical aspects of designing and implementing experiments, while covering a range of current topics from the experimental semantics and pragmatics literature (and exploring new avenues) along the way, e.g., pronouns and definite reference, presuppositions, quantifiers and domain restriction, generics. We'll start with some basic aspects of experimental design, including counter-balancing, controlling for confounds, utilizing fillers, as well as a range of key experimental task paradigms, such as simple truth- value judgments and picture sentence matching, acceptability ratings, reading time studies, and visual world eye tracking. For implementation, we will introduce the PCIbex platform at https://farm.pcibex.net and its relevant functionalities. Students will select a topic area, either individually or in small groups, and start from a survey article or recent journal paper to familiarize themselves with current issues. Next, they will formulate their own question, decide on a suitable task paradigm, and begin fleshing out a full experiment implementation, with the goal of collecting data at the end of the semester (if at all possible). The project will then be written up in a term paper. This provides students with the opportunity to engage in a scientific investigation of their own early on in their career in a domain that is easily accessible and yet central to the general enterprise of the cognitive sciences.

This course examines how people use language. We will focus on Herb H. Clark’s book “Using Language” (1996). In this book, Clark proposes that language use is a form of joint action, and extensively develop what this claim entails and how it accounts for people’s linguistic behavior. The course will consist of a detailed examination of Clark’s thesis.

This course will explore some issues concerning the internal structure of words. After a brief introduction to some basic terms and concepts, we will discuss the interaction of morphology with phonology. We will look both at how morphology conditions phonological rules and how phonology conditions morphology. Then we will turn to the interaction of syntax and morphology. We will look at some problems raised by inflectional morphology, clitics and compounds. The main requirement for the class will be a series of homework exercises in morphological analysis and a short paper at the end of the semester.

This class focuses on an in-depth study of the grammar of a given language, typically one that is understudied or that has particularly interesting grammatical properties. Different aspects of grammar will be considered, drawing on features of the sound system, morphology, syntax and semantics as appropriate.