Controlled experiments are a key element of empirical research, and they play an increasingly important role in the study of language and communication. This course will be divided into two halves. In the first half, students will be introduced to the fundamentals of how to conduct an experiment, along with a basic introduction to statistical methods. The emphasis will be on understanding the basic logic of experimental design, but special lectures will focus on the application of particular methods to the study of language. In the second half, classes will become more like lab meetings as students develop their own experimental projects from the ground up. At the end of the semester they will write up these projects as papers.

This course describes current theorizing on how the human mind achieves high-level cognitive processes such as using language, thinking, and reasoning. The course discusses issues such as whether the language ability is unique to humans, whether there is a critical period to the acquisition of a language, the nature of conceptual knowledge, how people perform deductive reasoning and induction, and how linguistic and conceptual knowledge interact.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the basic concepts of sentence structure in a "pretheoretical" framework, demonstrating that any natural human language must have certain structures and must choose the rest from a restricted universal set. The textbook, which was written for this course, discusses each set of structures with examples from six languages: English, Spanish, Latin, Biblical Hebrew, Mandarin, and Navajo. The instructor will add languages from among those with which the students are familiar, within the limits of his competence. This course will help students not only to learn foreign languages, but also to improve their own writing skills, by making the structures that they must use more explicit and intelligible.

It is sometimes said that every word has its own history. But there are also general factors affecting how words change over time. In this course, we explore both aspects of the history of words. On the one hand, we explore the ways in which the saying is true, by investigating taboo words, euphemisms, shibboleths, doublets, folk etymology, idioms, paradigm gaps, reanalysis, and other word-specific processes. On the other hand, we discuss the general factors, such as regular sound change (for instance, the Great Vowel Shift), word frequency, and others, as time and interest permit.

Soda, pop, or cokes? Buggy or shopping cart? Y'all, Y'alls, y'all'd've, y'all'd've'f'I'd've? Do you talk black, speak Appalachian - maybe both? Is your vernacular spectacular? Does anyone talk 'normal'? What does your accent say about you? We use language every day, but don't always take the time to stop and talk about the language we use. Language can both be a powerful tool for communication, and also a means to mock and disempower the 'other' (such as using the Southern accent to portray stereotypes). It can be used to draw people in (I'm lookin at you, brotha, sista) and dividing (you ain't from around here, are ya?) And, even if we share the exact same language - or think we do - miscommunications still seem to abound. This course will bring a sociolinguistic perspective to language: how we use it, how we speak and write multiple versions of the same language, and how it reflects our identities, particularly with regards to race, class, gender, and regional backgrounds. We will explore deep questions of language as a medium of communication with consequences and impact in political, social, and personal realms. In addition to producing a research paper, we will also explore codeswitching and codemeshing techniques. This course, open to majors and non-majors, will explore language in social interactions, both as a means for humans to inflict power, but also as a site for deploying resistance. Language, at the intersections of power and identity, is not neutral. This sociolinguistic course will apply linguistic principles to literary forms, to explore how Black novelists such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Ken Saro-Wiwa, M. NourbeSe Philip, bell hooks, and others, incorporate their voices across the Black diaspora to explore the ways that Black voices are expressed - or silenced - when accounting for agency and power relations

In this course, we study formal mathematical tools for the analysis of language that help us understand and classify the complex structures and rules that constitute language and grammar. These tools include set theory, formal language and automata theory, as well as aspects of logic, and will be applied to the syntax and semantics of natural language. In addition to learning something about formal tools for analyzing language, this will also enhance your general skills in analytical reasoning.

Human language viewed from a social and historical perspective. Students will acquire the tools of linguistic analysis through interactive computer programs, covering phonetics, phonology and morphology, in English and other languages. These techniques will then be used to trace social differences in the use of language, and changing patterns of social stratification. The course will focus on linguistic changes in progress in American society, in both mainstream and minority communities, and the social problems associated with them. Students will engage in field projects to search for the social correlates of linguistic behavior, and use quantitative methods to analyze the results.

Human language viewed from a social and historical perspective. Students will acquire the tools of linguistic analysis through interactive computer programs, covering phonetics, phonology and morphology, in English and other languages. These techniques will then be used to trace social differences in the use of language, and changing patterns of social stratification. The course will focus on linguistic changes in progress in American society, in both mainstream and minority communities, and the social problems associated with them. Students will engage in field projects to search for the social correlates of linguistic behavior, and use quantitative methods to analyze the results.

Human language viewed from a social and historical perspective. Students will acquire the tools of linguistic analysis through interactive computer programs, covering phonetics, phonology and morphology, in English and other languages. These techniques will then be used to trace social differences in the use of language, and changing patterns of social stratification. The course will focus on linguistic changes in progress in American society, in both mainstream and minority communities, and the social problems associated with them. Students will engage in field projects to search for the social correlates of linguistic behavior, and use quantitative methods to analyze the results.

Human language viewed from a social and historical perspective. Students will acquire the tools of linguistic analysis through interactive computer programs, covering phonetics, phonology and morphology, in English and other languages. These techniques will then be used to trace social differences in the use of language, and changing patterns of social stratification. The course will focus on linguistic changes in progress in American society, in both mainstream and minority communities, and the social problems associated with them. Students will engage in field projects to search for the social correlates of linguistic behavior, and use quantitative methods to analyze the results.