Class Schedules

The aim of this course is to make you aware of the complex organization and systematic nature of language, the primary means of human communication. In a sense, you will be studying yourself, since you are a prime example of a language user. Most of your knowledge of language, however, is unconscious, and the part of language that you can describe is largely the result of your earlier education, which may have given you confused, confusing, or misleading notions about language. This course is intended to clarify your ideas about language and bring you to a better understanding of its nature. By the end of the course you should be familiar with some of the terminology and techniques of linguistic analysis and be able to apply this knowledge to the description of different languages. There are no prerequisites, but this course is the prerequisite for almost every higher level course within the linguistics major.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Sociolinguistics is the study of the social language variation inevitable in all societies, be they closed and uniform or diverse and multicultural. Language and culture are so closely tied that it is nearly impossible to discuss language variation without also understanding its relation to culture. As humans, we judge each other constantly on the basis of the way we use language, we make sweeping generalizations about people's values and moral worth solely on the basis of the language they use.  Diversity in language often stands as a symbol of ethnic and social diversity. If someone criticizes our language we feel they are criticizing our inmost self. This course introduces students to the overwhelming amount of linguistic diversity in the United States and elsewhere, while at the same time making them aware of the cultural prejudices inherent in our attitude towards people who communicate differently from us. The class involves analysis and discussion of the readings, setting the stage for exploration assignments, allowing students to do their own research on linguistic diversity.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

All languages have structure, and syntax is the study of how language users combine words into meaningful phrases, sentences, and conversations. The world's languages vary enormously in how they express events and describe situations, and in this class, you will learn about the many different ways in which syntax makes this communication possible. We will explore this syntactic diversity by going hands-on with real data from a variety of languages - including specific languages of your choice.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Human beings have an unprecedented ability to shape the environment around them, yet the environment powerfully shapes both individuals and species. Two main questions run throughout this course: 1. How does language influence the way we think about and perceive nature, which in turn influences the way we interact with and shape nature? 2. How has our environment shaped the Language faculty and individual languages? To answer these questions, we'll start by asking, what is language and what is nature? Then we'll turn to the way that our environment has impacted the evolution of Language. Next we'll look at indigenous knowledge as it is encoded by language and the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis, which says that language influences the way we perceive the world. With this as background, we'll look at the language of environmental discourse. Next, using the metaphor of ecology, we'll examine languages as if they were organisms and analyze the ecosystems that sustain them. Knowing what makes a healthy language, we'll look at endangered languages and the connections between linguistic diversity and biodiversity.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

What is sound and how do linguists study it?  This course is an introduction to basic acoustics and experimental procedures in linguistics.  We learn how to quantify the speech signal (using Praat software) to answer questions about human speech sounds. Students will have a chance to learn about their own speech through in-class activities, such as plotting their vowel space, measuring their pitch range, and determining how they produce consonants by conducting static palatography (a procedure where the tongue is "painted" to learn more about articulation). Students will conduct their own linguistic research based on a language/dialect of their choice. Prerequisite(s): LING 104

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Quantitative Thinking Q2

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

A linguistic survey of the Spanish language aimed at improving pronunciation and increasing comprehension of the structure of the language, deepening students' understanding of the sound system, word formation, grammar and meaning. Study will emphasize phonetics and provide an introduction to transcription, phonology, morphology and syntax, as well as provide an overview of linguistic change and geographic variation. This course satisfies the Area 3 requirement for the Hispanic and Latin American Studies major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 or SPAN 306 or consent of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What is language and what is it for? What makes a series of sounds into a meaningful sentence? What makes a sentence true? Why is language always changing? This course will introduce students to ways in which twentieth century philosophers have attempted to provide answers to such questions. Since the philosophy of language has been so crucial to contemporary philosophy, this course also serves as an introduction to philosophical thought from the beginning of twentieth century to the present. Topics will range from more technical problems (theories of meaning, reference and truth; synonymy and analyticity; universals and natural kinds; private languages) to broader issues examining the relationship between language and culture (language games; radical interpretation; social change). Readings typically include writings by Ludwig Wittgenstein, W.V. Quine, John Searle, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault, and bell hooks. Prerequisite(s): PHIL 201, or permission of instructor

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course, which is required for all linguistics majors, students meet with one or more bilingual speakers of a language unknown to them, and attempt by means of elicitation and analysis of texts to understand its structure.  This course is part two of the linguistics capstone. Prerequisite(s): LING 300.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In this course, which is required for all linguistics majors, students meet with one or more bilingual speakers of a language unknown to them, and attempt by means of elicitation and analysis of texts to understand its structure.  This course is part two of the linguistics capstone. Prerequisite(s): LING 300.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

A survey of modern dialectal variations of Spanish and Peninsular Spanish varieties. Sociolinguistic issues and historical aspects of language will be addressed, along with other extralinguistic factors. Through this course, students will gain a linguistic understanding of the principal varieties of Modern Spanish. This course satisfies the Area 3 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 309  or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This workshop for advanced students of Japanese explores the craft and cultural implications of Japanese-to-English literary translation. It aims to give students not only a facility and sophistication in translating Japanese, but also a closer familiarity with the Japanese language itself. Through weekly translation assignments, we will examine the expressive qualities of the Japanese language, tracing major developments of prose style in the modern period and studying the socio-historical context manifested in those linguistic innovations. Our work will be informed and enhanced by engagements with theories of translation as well as essays on Japanese-to-English translation specifically. We will cover a broad range of genres, including essays, poetry, manga, and film (subtitles). The course will culminate in an original project translating a Japanese work of one's choice. Prerequisite(s): JAPA 305 - Third Year Japanese I or higher.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The aim of this course is to make you aware of the complex organization and systematic nature of language. You will be studying yourself and those around you, since you are all language users. Most of your knowledge of language, however, is unconscious, and earlier education may have given you confusing or misleading notions about language. This course is intended to clarify your ideas about language and bring you to a better understanding of its nature. You will learn more about how languages work by observing and analyzing  language(s) (from people you know, from yourself, videos, in-class data sets, social media, texting etc.)  By the end of the course you should be familiar with some of the terminology and techniques of linguistic analysis and be able to apply this knowledge to the description of different languages.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In this course you will be trained to produce and recognize (almost) all the  speech sounds which human languages make use of, and to develop a systematic way of analyzing and recording them.  We will learn how to transcribe data in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Class time will focus on practicing perceiving and producing the speech sounds found in spoken languages (vowels, tones, trills, clicks, etc). Each student will have the opportunity to conduct research on the phonetics of a language of their choice, working closely with a native-speaking consultant. This course is recommended for students of languages, linguistics, theater, music and anyone who wants to become more aware of their (and other people's) pronunciation.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course will introduce practical skills for carrying out linguistic research with computational methods. Students will learn to utilize corpus software, regular expressions, Python, and large language models for language data processing and dataset creation. They'll also explore computational methods for data interpretation. The course will cover various language data types, including text corpora, social media content, and speech data. While a basic understanding of linguistics and Python programming will be beneficial, it is not a prerequisite.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q1

Distribution Requirements:
Natural science and mathematics

Course Materials

Phonology is the study of how sounds and/or signs pattern in language, i.e. how they are organized into perceptual categories.  In this class we will look at data from a wide variety of languages and analyze them using several formal theories to find patterns and generalizations about phonological contrasts and alternations.  In the process, students will evaluate the explanatory strengths of each theory.  The class will emphasize the analytical skills used in solving problem sets and on how to present and justify an analysis of the dataset. Prerequisite(s): LING 104

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q1

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course aims to investigate the complex relationship between language and identity in Japanese, Asian American, and other diasporic communities. Language plays a significant role in conveying one's identity, as do other semiotic means such as clothing. By exploring scholarship that considers language as it relates to identity, students will discover how speakers/writers use their agency in expressing their identity and how identity emerges as a social and cultural phenomenon. They will learn about multiple interrelated factors that affect how speakers/writers view and use language such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and multilingualism. No knowledge of Asian languages is required.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The first prerequisite to understanding a linguistic message is the ability to decipher its code. This course is training in the decoding of grammar. Through practice in problem-solving, you will develop expertise in the grammatical systems of a wide sample of the world's language types. Prerequisite(s): LING 100 - Introduction to Linguistics, plus one of LING 200 - Syntax or LING 205 - Phonology.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

A linguistic survey of the Spanish language aimed at improving pronunciation and increasing comprehension of the structure of the language, deepening students' understanding of the sound system, word formation, grammar and meaning. Study will emphasize phonetics and provide an introduction to transcription, phonology, morphology and syntax, as well as provide an overview of linguistic change and geographic variation. This course satisfies the Area 3 requirement for the Hispanic and Latin American Studies major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 or SPAN 306 or consent of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course aims to give students the opportunity to find the joy of analyzing Japanese language by enhancing their understanding of its complex and rich sociocultural meanings. In Japanese language courses, students learn the norms (i.e., what is considered to be correct and proper) regarding honorifics, speech levels, orthography, the so-called gendered language, and other linguistic forms. In this linguistics course, they will find out how actual speakers/writers observe or deviate from the norms to create sociocultural meanings and how the adherence to or subversion of the norm often reflects language ideologies. In the process they will reflect on their own as well as others' speech and writing, and learn how to critically evaluate and analyze language in the media. In addition to reading and discussing academic articles in English, students will collect and analyze authentic Japanese data such as anime, TV drama, films, manga, novels, and blogs. Japanese Language and Culture majors who are juniors and seniors may count this course as their capstone experience. The course also fulfills the Asian Studies, Japanese, and Linguistics major and minor requirements. Prerequisite(s): JAPA 204 or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

An overview of Modern Spanish as it has developed over time. Course will trace the historical evolution of the most salient phonological, morpho-syntactic and lexical traits of Modern Spanish and will introduce some of the principle theories of language change. Concepts will be reinforced through work with authentic historical texts. This course satisfies the Area 3 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 309 or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What is a word? How do we make words? How does word structure differacross the world’s languages (language typology)? What is thedifference between inflection and derivation? How does morphologicalstructure fit into syntax and phonology? This course aims to answerthese and other questions by examining morphological phenomena fromacross the world’s languages. Students will explore the fundamentalconcepts of morphology and learn how to analyze and describe thestructure of words in different languages. Specific focus will dependon the interests of enrolled students but is likely to include indepth analysis of Algonquian languages. Prerequisite(s): LING 100 or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

An introduction to techniques for working with natural (i.e., human) language, focusing on natural language text. We will focus on understanding the challenges inherent in working with language data, drawing from research on language from linguistics and related fields, and survey techniques that can be used to overcome those challenges. Such techniques may include: n-gram modeling, parsing, word vector embeddings, neural network architectures, model evaluation & interpretability, and the social and societal impacts of NLP, etc. Throughout, we’ll discuss application areas, which may include: language modeling, machine translation, sentiment analysis, text summarization, etc., as well as applications of these tools to questions elsewhere in the sciences and humanities. Parts of this course will give you hands-on experience implementing NLP models in Python using standard machine learning libraries, and thus familiarity with Python is expected. Prerequisite(s): COMP 221.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials