This course traces the linguistic history of English from its earliest reconstructable ancestor, Proto-Indo-European, to the present. We focus especially on significant large-scale changes, such as the restructuring of the verb system in Proto-Germanic, the intricate interaction of sound changes in the immediate prehistory of Old English, syntactic change in Middle English, and the diversification of English dialects since 1750.

This tutorial allows students to deal in a concentrated manner with selected major topics in linguistics by means of extensive readings and research. Two topics are studied during the semester, exposing students to a range of sophisticated linguistic questions.

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.

This course is an introduction to current syntactic theory, covering the principles that govern phrase structure (the composition of phrases and sentences), movement (dependencies between syntactic constituents), and binding (the interpretation of different types of noun phrases). Although much of the evidence discussed in the class will come from English, evidence from other languages will also play an important role, in keeping with the comparative and universalist perspective of modern syntactic theory.

This course focuses on experimental investigations of speech sounds. General contents include: the fundamentals of speech production and perception; speech analysis tools and techniques; and topics in phonetic studies. The course consists of integrated lectures and laboratory sessions in which students learn computer techniques for analyzing digital recordings.

The historical origin of writing in Sumeria, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica; the transmission of writing across languages and cultures, including the route from Phoenician to Greek to Etruscan to Latin to English; the development of individual writing systems over time; the traditional classification of written symbols (ideographic, logographic, syllabic, alphabetic); methods of decipherment; differences between spoken and written language; how linguistic structure influences writing, and is reflected by it; social and political aspects of writing; literacy and the acquisition of writing.

The historical origin of writing in Sumeria, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica; the transmission of writing across languages and cultures, including the route from Phoenician to Greek to Etruscan to Latin to English; the development of individual writing systems over time; the traditional classification of written symbols (ideographic, logographic, syllabic, alphabetic); methods of decipherment; differences between spoken and written language; how linguistic structure influences writing, and is reflected by it; social and political aspects of writing; literacy and the acquisition of writing.

The historical origin of writing in Sumeria, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica; the transmission of writing across languages and cultures, including the route from Phoenician to Greek to Etruscan to Latin to English; the development of individual writing systems over time; the traditional classification of written symbols (ideographic, logographic, syllabic, alphabetic); methods of decipherment; differences between spoken and written language; how linguistic structure influences writing, and is reflected by it; social and political aspects of writing; literacy and the acquisition of writing.

Cognitive Science is founded on the realization that many problems in the analysis of human and artificial intelligence require an interdisciplinary approach. The course is intended to introduce students to the problems and characteristic concepts of Cognitive Science, drawing on formal and empirical approaches from the parent disciplines of computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology. The topics covered include Perception, Action, Learning, Language, Knowledge Representation, and Inference, and the relations and interactions between such modules. The course shows how the different views from the parent disciplines interact, and identifies some common themes among the theories that have been proposed. The course pays particular attention to the distinctive role of computation in such theories, and provides an introduction to some of the main directions of current research in the field.

Cognitive Science is founded on the realization that many problems in the analysis of human and artificial intelligence require an interdisciplinary approach. The course is intended to introduce students to the problems and characteristic concepts of Cognitive Science, drawing on formal and empirical approaches from the parent disciplines of computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology. The topics covered include Perception, Action, Learning, Language, Knowledge Representation, and Inference, and the relations and interactions between such modules. The course shows how the different views from the parent disciplines interact, and identifies some common themes among the theories that have been proposed. The course pays particular attention to the distinctive role of computation in such theories, and provides an introduction to some of the main directions of current research in the field.