This is a course about how language and communication can be thought of as games. When people use language to communicate, they are following rules to perform actions that have an effect on the world, including other people. These actions might achieve goals, and they might prompt further actions, and so on. Perhaps more interestingly, these linguistic actions can, over time, lead to changes in the environment and even the rules of the game itself. In other words, the playing field changes dynamically as a result of the actions performed on it.
This way of looking at language is not new, and this is also a course about how thinking about language this way can inspire (and has inspired) formal models and laboratory experiments that help us to understand how language works and how it evolves. In covering this we will also touch on how the same approach has shed light on cultural evolution beyond language and communication alone.

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.

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.

This is a seminar on how language relates to perception and cognition. The seminar pays particular attention to the question of whether and how language might affect (and be affected by) other mental processes, how different languages represent the mental and physical world, and how children acquire language-general and language-specific ways of encoding human experience. The course incorporates cross-linguistic, cognitive and developmental perspectives on a new and rapidly changing research area.

Students 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. This course will have different topics each term.

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

Selected topics either in Indo-European comparative linguistics or in historical and comparative method.

Topics are chosen from such areas as featural representations; syllable theory; metrical structure; tonal phonology; prosodic morphology; interaction of phonology with syntax and morphology.