LING-Linguistics

Practical training in hearing and recording sounds in a wide range of phonetic systems. Demonstrations and practice in phonetic analysis and description. Study in the techniques of using an informant.

The origin and development of language, language families and their relations, language types, and language change. Special study of a small number of typologically contrasting languages. Focus on the study of language from anthropological and historical perspectives.

Elementary introduction to modern standard English grammar, both formal and informal, both written and spoken. Stresses the importance of linguistic evidence in understanding grammatical correctness; offers a demystification and critique of older traditional grammar in the light of recent research.

What is science? Anatomy of the scientific method, with linguistics as exemplification. Theories, evidence, falsification, scientific revolutions.

Emphasizes the acquisition of four related skills: recognition, transcription, description, and production of speech sounds. Involves learning the highly useful phonetic alphabet, and acquiring an understanding of the articulatory and acoustic properties of speech sounds.

Reviews the major aspects of Hungarian grammar concentrating on features that separate Hungarian from Indo-European languages.

Supervised experience with acoustic speech analysis equipment. Students learn to make and interpret waveforms, spectrograms, pitch tracks, etc., based on live or recorded speech. Some reading required.

Grounding in the physics and physiology of speech sounds: production, acoustics, and perception. Analysis of wave forms and spectrograms. The nature of phonetic processes and the application of phonetic studies of phonological investigations.

An introduction to the computer simulation of the process of natural language understanding, one of the most significant new applications of linguistics. Concentrates on syntactic processing; parsing, representation of lexical information, and knowledge representation.

Introduction to computer simulation of phonological and morphological knowledge. Intended for linguistics and computer science majors having an interest in natural language analysis.

The phonology, morphology, and syntax of Irish, along with a consideration of its current sociopolitical situation. No knowledge of Irish required. Prerequisite(s): course 101, and course 111 or 112. Enrollment by permission of instructor.

Deadline for submission of project proposal is one year in advance of proposed completion. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Students write one squib (one to ten pages) per week except for weeks three and seven, when they write two squibs. A selection of the squibs is presented in class; one or two will be rewritten.

The history and recent development of the science of linguistics, with primary emphasis on the development of generative grammar. Origin, development, and relationships of major theoretical frameworks. Pivotal controversies, arguments, and discoveries.

Third part of a three quarter introduction to phonology. Topics of the sequence include fundamentals of acoustic phonetics; introduction to optimality theory; theories of syllabification, stress, and prosodic organization; prosodic morphology; advanced issues in faithfulness and correspondence; segmental and suprasegmental processes.

Continuation of Syntax B. The syntax of anaphora. Topics vary from year to year, and may include the following: coreference in antecedent-pronoun relations; reflexives and reciprocals; disjoint reference; bound-variable anaphora; ellipsis; semantic and pragmatic constraints on anaphora.

Third and final course in the graduate introduction to semantics, focusing on questions at the border between semantics and pragmatics. Concerns include: modality, conditionals, non-declarative meaning, and context and context structure viewed from a dynamic perspective.

Theory and methods in psycholinguistics, covering perception, production, and acquisition of language and linguistic structure. A hands-on, laboratory-style introduction to the topic, focusing on the relation between experimental findings and linguistic theory. Graduate students have separate evaluation criteria. Students cannot receive credit for this course and course 157 or 257. Three-credit version of course 257. Does not require a final paper.

A survey of the basic mathematical notions fundamental to the understanding of work in theoretical syntax, semantics, and phonology. Topics covered include basic set theory, formal logic, boolean algebra, graph theory, and formal language theory.

In-depth investigation of some topic in computational or mathematical linguistics. Topics vary from year to year.

Exploration of certain metaphysical and epistemological issues relating to the subject matter of linguistics.