A general introduction to the nature, history and use of human language, speech and writing. Topics include the biological basis of human language, and analogous systems in other creatures; relations to cognition, communication, and social organization; sounds, forms and meanings in the world's languages; the reconstruction of linguistic history and the family tree of languages; dialect variation and language standardization; language and gender; language learning by children and adults; the neurology of language and language disorders; the nature and history of writing systems. Intended for any undergraduate interested in language or its use, this course is also recommended as an introduction for students who plan to major in linguistics.

A general introduction to the nature, history and use of human language, speech and writing. Topics include the biological basis of human language, and analogous systems in other creatures; relations to cognition, communication, and social organization; sounds, forms and meanings in the world's languages; the reconstruction of linguistic history and the family tree of languages; dialect variation and language standardization; language and gender; language learning by children and adults; the neurology of language and language disorders; the nature and history of writing systems. Intended for any undergraduate interested in language or its use, this course is also recommended as an introduction for students who plan to major in linguistics.

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.

Topics in the Syntax-Semantics Interface

In this course, students construct their own language, one that is compatible with what is known about possible human languages. To this end, the course investigates language typology through lectures and examination of grammars of unfamiliar languages. Topics include language universals, points of choice in a fixed decision space, and dependencies among choices.

An introduction to language acquisition in children and the development of related cognitive and perceptual systems. Topics include the nature of speech perception and the specialization to the native language; the structure and acquisition of words; children's phonology; the development of grammar; bilingualism and second language acquisition; language learning impairments; the biological basis of language acquisition; the role in language learning in language change. Intended for any undergraduate interested in the psychology and development of language.

Detailed study of topics in syntax and semantics, e.g., pronominalization, negation, complementation. Topics vary from term to term.

The goal of this course is divided into two main components: First, it provides a setting in which second year PhD students in Linguistics will develop the skills that are essential to communicating and advancing their research; and second, it provides professional support in a number of areas, including (but not limited to) abstract writing, preparing papers for publication, dealing with reviews, and related topics.
At the beginning of each semester, the students will determine which of their research projects will be central to the seminar; this is the one that they will regularly present on during course meetings. One possibility is that students will be simultaneously enrolled in an independent study for their project, but that is by no means necessary.
The course will be flexible enough so that students can have certain days devoted to the specific professional activities that they are engaged in. For example, we might spend part of a session providing feedback on an abstract that one of the participants is preparing to submit. The small size of the course will ensure that specific occasions like this can be addressed in course meetings throughout the
course of the year.

The generative literature on language acquisition has produced many accurate and insightful descriptions of child language, but relatively few explicit accounts of learning that incorporate the role of individual experience into the knowledge of specific languages. Likewise, the experimental approach to language development has identified processes that could provide the bridge between the data and the grammar, but questions remain whether laboratory findings can sufficiently generalize to the full range of linguistic complexity. This course is an overview of research in language acquisition with particular focus on the important connection between what children know and how they come to know it.

This course provides students with the opportunity to hone their statistical, computational, and organizational skillsets while conducting original linguistic research on data gathered in continuing fieldwork in the speech community. Topics include forced alignment and vowel extraction, auditory and automated variable coding, the application of linear and logistic regression, and techniques for effective data visualization.