Courses

Modality, negation, and polarity are phenomena that have been closely intertwined throughout the millennia-long history of Greek. Although the precise nature of their interaction—and the way this interaction is reflected in syntax—has evolved over time, the relationship among them has remained both strong and stable. This course offers a broad historical overview of these developments while concentrating on specific changes, including the use of modal verbs as negative polarity items, the emergence of new negators and the restructuring of the nonveridical domain, the grammaticalization of modality, and the various ways in which belief is encoded through subjunctive forms. To deepen our understanding of the syntax–semantics interface and the mechanisms of language change, we draw on relevant data from Pontic Greek, particularly the Romeyka variety spoken in the Black Sea region today. This variety not only exemplifies the strong interaction among modality, negation, and polarity, but also diverges in important ways from mainland Greek varieties. The overarching aim of the course is to equip students with a solid understanding of how modality is structured crosslinguistically and how it evolves over time. No prior knowledge of Greek is required.

This course offers a brief survey of how linguists analyze the structure and the use of language. Looking at the structure of language means understanding what phonemes, words, and sentences are, and how each language establishes principles for the combinations of these things and for their use; looking at the use of language means understanding the ways in which individuals and groups use language to declare their social identities and the ways in which languages can change over time. The overarching theme is understanding what varieties of language structure and use are found across the world's languages and cultures, and what limitations on this variety exist.

This course is an introduction to basic goals and methods of current syntactic theory through a detailed analysis of a range of phenomena, with emphasis on argumentation and empirical justification. Major topics include phrase structure and constituency, selection and subcategorization, argument structure, case, voice, expletives, and raising and control structures.

TBD.

This course can also be taken by students who are not majoring in Linguistics but are interested in learning something about the uniqueness of human language, spoken or signed. It covers a selection from the following topics: What is the position of spoken language in the usually multimodal forms of communication among humans? In what ways does spoken language differ from signed language? What features make spoken and signed language linguistic? What features distinguish linguistic means of communication from animal communication? How do humans communicate with animals? From an evolutionary point of view, how can we account for the fact that spoken language is the dominant mode of communication in all human communities around the world? Why cannot animals really communicate linguistically? What do the terms language "acquisition" and "transmission" really mean? What factors account for differences between "language acquisition" by children and by adults? Are children really perfect language learners? What factors bring about language evolution, including language speciation and the emergence of new language varieties? How did language evolve in mankind? This is a general education course without any prerequisites. It provides a necessary foundation to those working on language at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

This course familiarizes students with what it means to study meaning and use in natural language. By “meaning” we refer to the (for the most part, logical) content of words, constituents, and sentences (semantics), and by “use” we intend to capture how this content is implemented in discourse and what kinds of additional dimensions of meaning may then arise (pragmatics). Some of the core empirical phenomena that have to do with meaning are introduced: lexical (i.e., word) meaning, reference, quantification, logical inferencing, presupposition, implicature, context sensitivity, cross-linguistic variation, speech acts. Main course goals are not only to familiarize students with the basic topics in semantics and pragmatics but also to help them develop basic skills in semantic analysis and argumentation.

This is an advanced introduction to the field of psycholinguistics. We will do an in-depth overview of both the empirical findings and the methodologies used on various topics in language comprehension/production, including areas of speech perception, lexical processing, syntactic parsing, and semantic/pragmatic processing. Models at both the computational and the mechanistic levels will also be examined.

The brain is an incredibly complex organ, responsible for many elaborate functions. Even after centuries of research and the development of advanced imaging technology, we are just beginning to understand how it is able to perform those functions, and how they are impacted by brain injury. This course will investigate how language is produced and comprehended, and how those processes are impacted by a brain injury or neurodegenerative disorder. We will be drawing connections between current linguistic theory, psycho- and neuro-linguistic models, and clinical data from acquired language disorders. We will also be discussing the ‘gaps’ in the field, including who and what might be left out of the discussion.

TBD.

In this course we will investigate anthropological and linguistic perspectives on language emergence, as well the social, demographic, environmental, linguistic, and modality (vision, speech, touch) factors that contribute to the formation of new languages. Emerging languages in communities around the world offer unprecedented scientific opportunities to address important questions previously deemed intractable, such as: Where does language come from? How do our experiences of the world influence the way our languages are structured? At what level of abstraction can language be studied as an autonomous object of analysis? The topic of language emergence has tended to focus on the interaction of linguistic, psychological, and demographic factors. We will bring the important anthropological dimension to the topic of language emergence, which addresses the way that users of emerging languages inhabit the world. The readings, lectures, and discussions will address new implications for our understanding of language creation.

Modality, negation, and polarity are phenomena that have been closely intertwined throughout the millennia-long history of Greek. Although the precise nature of their interaction—and the way this interaction is reflected in syntax—has evolved over time, the relationship among them has remained both strong and stable. This course offers a broad historical overview of these developments while concentrating on specific changes, including the use of modal verbs as negative polarity items, the emergence of new negators and the restructuring of the nonveridical domain, the grammaticalization of modality, and the various ways in which belief is encoded through subjunctive forms. To deepen our understanding of the syntax–semantics interface and the mechanisms of language change, we draw on relevant data from Pontic Greek, particularly the Romeyka variety spoken in the Black Sea region today. This variety not only exemplifies the strong interaction among modality, negation, and polarity, but also diverges in important ways from mainland Greek varieties. The overarching aim of the course is to equip students with a solid understanding of how modality is structured crosslinguistically and how it evolves over time. No prior knowledge of Greek is required.

What does it mean to say that someone sounds Gay? What does it mean to say that somebody sounds Black? Or to say that someone sounds ‘educated,’ ‘southern,’ ‘woke,’ ‘like the kids these days,’ or ‘not from around here,’ and so on. In answering these questions, we’ll examine the specific linguistic properties that get used (often unconsciously) to encode social signals and the ways that those same properties are perceived (also often unconsciously) to inform our social judgments. At the same time, we'll examine the rhetoric and terminology used in media and everyday conversation to characterize other people's dialects and voices along with all the ways this usually diverges from linguistic reality.

Each week, we'll cover one ‘voice’ (e.g. accent, dialect, social group, etc.) and read about its linguistic characteristics along with the ways those characteristics influence our social judgements. We'll also examine the ways that particular voice is portrayed, discussed, or criticized in popular media. Students will write short essays (500-800 words) each week and grades will be based on those essays as well as participation in class and canvas discussion threads.

This course is an introduction to sociolinguistics, the study of language in its social context. We will look at variation at all levels of language and how this variation constructs and is constructed by identity and culture, including relationships between language and social class, language and gender, and language and ethnicity. We will also discuss language attitudes and ideologies, as well as some of the educational, political, and social repercussions of language variation and standardization.

TBD.

This course is an advanced graduate seminar in theoretical syntax. Through readings from the primary research literature, we will make as much progress as we possibly can on answering the following questions, among others: Is syntax governed by principles of economy? If so, what kind of economy do they enforce: derivational economy, representational economy, some other kind, or more than one of the above—and why? And, insofar as syntax does exhibit economy effects, are any of them attributable to “third-factor” principles or principles of natural law—ones not specific to language?

We will read and discuss in detail approximately one research article per week, and every enrolled student will write a final squib on a syntactic topic of their choice, approved by the instructor (which need not be related to syntactic economy specifically).

This course will examine topics in generative syntax pertaining to purported linguistic universals, with a view towards cross-examining such claims against evidence deriving from contact languages, with a particular focus on Singlish.

The course aims to guide students on their research in a structured way and to present professionalization information crucial to success in the field. The course is organized largely around working on the research paper, with the goal of making it a conference-presentable and journal-publishable work. Topics covered include abstracts, publishing, handouts, presentation skills, course design, creating and maintaining a CV, cover letters, webpages, and in general everything that is required for you to successfully compete for jobs in linguistics.

This course offers a brief survey of how linguists analyze the structure and the use of language. Looking at the structure of language means understanding what phonemes, words, and sentences are, and how each language establishes principles for the combinations of these things and for their use; looking at the use of language means understanding the ways in which individuals and groups use language to declare their social identities and the ways in which languages can change over time. The overarching theme is understanding what varieties of language structure and use are found across the world's languages and cultures, and what limitations on this variety exist.

This course is an introduction to the study of speech sounds and their patterning in the world's languages. The first half of the course focuses on how speech sounds are described with respect to their articulatory, acoustic, and perceptual structures. There are lab exercises both in phonetic transcription and in the acoustic analysis of speech sounds. The second half focuses on fundamental notions that have always been central to phonological analysis and that transcend differences between theoretical approaches: contrast, neutralization, natural classes, distinctive features, and basic phonological processes (e.g., assimilation).

This course is an introduction to basic goals and methods of current syntactic theory through a detailed analysis of a range of phenomena, with emphasis on argumentation and empirical justification. Major topics include phrase structure and constituency, selection and subcategorization, argument structure, case, voice, expletives, and raising and control structures.

This course is an introduction to the linguistic diversity of Native North American Languages. In addition to a survey on grammars of select Native American languages and language families, students will engage in deeper study of a particular language interesting to them as a part of their coursework. This course provides both grammatical information as well as a brief introduction to the landscape of language revitalization, loss, and change in the modern era, including investigations of language vitality and the interplay between the federal governments and language programs.

How do humans learn, use, and understand language? Psycholinguistics describes a range of research areas that use experimental (and computational) approaches to address scientific problems pertaining to the psychology of language. This survey course on psycholinguistics provides an overview of the key issues discussed in psycholinguistics. It covers language comprehension, production, and acquisition, as well as topics on how our mental machinery shapes natural language and how language is organized and implemented in the brain.

Why did Hillary Clinton sound “southern” in her Alabama campaign stop? How did Barack Obama’s codeswitching into African American Language affect his political image? How do the dogwhistles politicians circulate get their meanings? These are just a few examples of the kinds of questions we will discuss. In this course, we will analyze the speech of politicians as well as broader political discourses, according to sociolinguistic theory. We will explore concepts such as dogwhistles, framing theory, speech genres, audience design, and personae, while also considering the intersections of language and nationalism, and language and gender and race. Discussions will build on real-life content particularly from US and Eastern European politics, but also from other parts of the world, depending on your interests and backgrounds. Some of the texts we will read include Alim & Smitherman’s Articulate While Black, and Macintosh & Mendoza-Denton’s Language in the Trump Era.

What happens when people who speak different languages live in the same area? How do languages change as a result of their environment and social structure? How do social situations lead to language change and multilingualism? This course will engage with the literature on contact linguistics and multilingualism providing theoretical backgrounds and foundations for analyzing real-world situations. This course will apply the theoretical understandings to several instances of contact linguistics and a variety of complex social situations via case studies. We will briefly cover topics and process such as: bi/multilingualism, translanguaging, dialect leveling, mixed-Languages, pidgins & creoles, and language shift, all through a lens that addresses the complex situations they exist in with respect to cultural contact and colonialism. This brief overview of each of these processes will give students a basis for understanding and recognizing them in real-world contexts as well as providing them with the tools to ask critical questions about the situations and results.

This course is an advanced survey of topics in morphology examining current morphological theory through detailed analysis of a range of phenomena and readings from the primary research literature. The topics covered include blocking, inflectional features, syncretism, allomorphy and suppletion, and morpheme order.

This course is an advanced graduate seminar in theoretical syntax. Through readings from the primary research literature, we will make as much progress as we possibly can on answering the following questions, among others: Is syntax governed by principles of economy? If so, what kind of economy do they enforce: derivational economy, representational economy, some other kind, or more than one of the above—and why? And, insofar as syntax does exhibit economy effects, are any of them attributable to “third-factor” principles or principles of natural law—ones not specific to language?

We will read and discuss in detail approximately one research article per week, and every enrolled student will write a final squib on a syntactic topic of their choice, approved by the instructor (which need not be related to syntactic economy specifically).

Variation is a ubiquitous feature of speech, yet much of the variation observed is non-random. This class will examine this type of structured heterogeneity (Weinreich et al., 1968) from the point of view of sociophonetics. We will focus on the interrelationships between phonetic/phonological form and social factors such as speaking style and the background of the speaker, with a particular interest in explaining the origins and transmission of linguistic change. Our goals will be to (a) acquire the phonetic and phonological foundation necessary to conduct sociophonetic research through practical exercises; (b) survey new sociolinguistic research that addresses issues in phonetic and phonological theories and (c) locate and explain phonetic variation in its social context while drawing on current approaches to the relationship between language and society.

What is the relationship between physical processes in the brain and body and the processes of thought and consciousness that constitute our mental life? Philosophers and others have puzzled over this question for millennia. Many have concluded it to be intractable. In recent decades, the field of cognitive science--encompassing philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and other disciplines--has proposed a new form of answer. The driving idea is that the interaction of the mental and the physical may be understood via a third level of analysis: that of the computational. This course offers a critical introduction to the elements of this approach, and surveys some of the alternative models and theories that fall within it. Readings are drawn from a range of historical and contemporary sources in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. (B) (II)

This course introduces students to the use of corpora in linguistics. Students will learn about the history of corpora, the different types of corpora that exist, and issues that arise in corpus building. There will also be an opportunity to critically evaluate studies that have used corpus data and to engage in practical activities. The course will not be limited to corpora involving spoken and written texts from major languages but will discuss issues that arise when developing corpora for minority languages (e.g., sign languages).

This course is a mixed level introduction to topics at the intersection of computation and language. We will study computational linguistics from both scientific and engineering angles: the use of computational modeling to address scientific questions in linguistics and cognitive science, as well as the design of computational systems to solve engineering problems in natural language processing (NLP). The course will combine analysis and discussion of these approaches with training in the programming and mathematical foundations necessary to put these methods into practice. The course is designed to accommodate students both with and without prior programming experience. Our goal is for all students to leave the course able to engage with and critically evaluate research in cognitive/linguistic modeling and NLP, and to be able to implement intermediate-level computational models for novel computational linguistics research.

This course is designed to review critically some of the literature on the phylogenetic emergence of Language, in order to determine which questions have been central to the subject matter, which ones have recurred the most, and to what extent the answers to these are now better informed. The class will also review new questions such as the following: What is the probable time of the emergence of modern language(s)? Should we speak of the emergence of Language or of languages, in the plural?

TBD.

The course aims to guide students on their research in a structured way and to present professionalization information crucial to success in the field. The course is organized largely around working on the research paper, with the goal of making it a conference-presentable and journal-publishable work. Topics covered include abstracts, publishing, handouts, presentation skills, course design, creating and maintaining a CV, cover letters, webpages, and in general everything that is required for you to successfully compete for jobs in linguistics.

This course offers a brief survey of how linguists analyze the structure and the use of language. Looking at the structure of language means understanding what phonemes, words, and sentences are, and how each language establishes principles for the combinations of these things and for their use; looking at the use of language means understanding the ways in which individuals and groups use language to declare their social identities and the ways in which languages can change over time. The overarching theme is understanding what varieties of language structure and use are found across the world's languages and cultures, and what limitations on this variety exist.

This course is an introduction to basic goals and methods of current syntactic theory through a detailed analysis of a range of phenomena, with emphasis on argumentation and empirical justification. Major topics include phrase structure and constituency, selection and subcategorization, argument structure, case, voice, expletives, and raising and control structures.

This is an advanced undergraduate course in theoretical syntax. Through readings from the primary research literature, we will reach the deepest understanding we possibly can of (a) the overarching goals of syntactic theory; (b) various aspects of, or subareas within, current syntactic theory; and (c) a range of empirical phenomena whose investigation has enabled us to push forward our theoretical understanding of syntax.

Why is the plural of child in English children and not *childs? Why is undoable ambiguous ((i) 'unable to be done', (ii) 'able to be undone'), while unkillable isn't (only 'unable to be killed')? Unhappier is intuitively composed of several, smaller pieces: un-, happy, and -er; but what about unkempt? These questions are the purview of MORPHOLOGY, the field of linguistics devoted to studying the internal structure of words and how they are formed. Consequently, in this course we will investigate the nature of morphemes, in all their cross-linguistic shapes and guises. Key concepts which will frame our discussion include inflection, syncretism, allomorphy, and blocking. The only prerequisite for this course is LING 20001: Introduction to Linguistics.

The Arctic is currently undergoing cultural and political upheavals due to rapid climate change and global politics. In this course, we use an interdisciplinary perspective to examine the lives of Arctic peoples—Inuit, Sámi, Nenets and others—whose lives are being disrupted due to melting sea ice, forest fires, thawing permafrost, and rising temperatures. Climate change affects the food supply: hunting, fishing, and foraging are disrupted by unreliable ice and snow conditions, altered wildlife migration patterns, and changes in plant life; fish and sea mammals are loaded with toxins. Warming in the Arctic has resulted in new access to natural resources which have long been buried under snow and ice, but such access comes at a high cost, bringing in extractive industries and a host of security issues. We examine the causes and nature of these changes and the repercussions for Arctic peoples, with a particular focus on language and cultural change. We place a particular emphasis on adaptation and change in the face of increasing threats from climate change, resource extraction, and globalization, and the consequences for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and international relations. To understand the complex interaction between human culture and the Arctic environment, we take a broad approach, considering language, literature, film and music, together with political analyses and discussions of human rights and current environmental science, and look for solutions.

This course can also be taken by students who are not majoring in Linguistics but are interested in learning something about the uniqueness of human language, spoken or signed. It covers a selection from the following topics: What is the position of spoken language in the usually multimodal forms of communication among humans? In what ways does spoken language differ from signed language? What features make spoken and signed language linguistic? What features distinguish linguistic means of communication from animal communication? How do humans communicate with animals? From an evolutionary point of view, how can we account for the fact that spoken language is the dominant mode of communication in all human communities around the world? Why cannot animals really communicate linguistically? What do the terms language "acquisition" and "transmission" really mean? What factors account for differences between "language acquisition" by children and by adults? Are children really perfect language learners? What factors bring about language evolution, including language speciation and the emergence of new language varieties? How did language evolve in mankind? This is a general education course without any prerequisites. It provides a necessary foundation to those working on language at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

This course familiarizes students with what it means to study meaning and use in natural language. By “meaning” we refer to the (for the most part, logical) content of words, constituents, and sentences (semantics), and by “use” we intend to capture how this content is implemented in discourse and what kinds of additional dimensions of meaning may then arise (pragmatics). Some of the core empirical phenomena that have to do with meaning are introduced: lexical (i.e., word) meaning, reference, quantification, logical inferencing, presupposition, implicature, context sensitivity, cross-linguistic variation, speech acts. Main course goals are not only to familiarize students with the basic topics in semantics and pragmatics but also to help them develop basic skills in semantic analysis and argumentation.

This course is intended to provide a foundation for students to pursue the quantitative study of phonology in the context of human interaction, and of speech and perception in the context of language. Specifically, this course focuses on how to design, conduct, and analyze a phonological experiment. We will approach laboratory phonology from the perspectives of both the speaker and the listener, with each perspective constituting roughly half the course. In the process, we will gain and practice skills in experimental phonetic and psycholinguistic work, while testing aspects of current phonological theory.

This course provides an in-depth study of advanced topics at the intersection of computation and language, oriented toward linguists and cognitive scientists. The class will focus on both scientific and engineering perspectives - the use of computational modeling to address advanced scientific questions in linguistics and cognitive science, as well as the design of computational systems to solve engineering problems. Topics will include machine translation, parsing, automatic speech recognition, transformer models, and large language models (LLMs), where we will focus on the implementation of these techniques. Students will work towards formulating research questions that can be addressed with complex computational methodology. Students will learn how to generate scripts and implement advanced computational techniques from scratch. Prior knowledge of Python is required.

In this course we will examine the language of deception and humor from a variety of perspectives: historical, developmental, neurological, and cross-cultural, and in a variety of contexts: fiction, advertising, politics, courtship, and everyday conversation. We will focus on the (linguistic) knowledge and skills that underlie the use of humor and deception and on what sorts of things they are used to communicate.

What does it mean to say that someone sounds Gay? What does it mean to say that somebody sounds Black? Or to say that someone sounds ‘educated,’ ‘southern,’ ‘woke,’ ‘like the kids these days,’ or ‘not from around here,’ and so on. In answering these questions, we’ll examine the specific linguistic properties that get used (often unconsciously) to encode social signals and the ways that those same properties are perceived (also often unconsciously) to inform our social judgments. At the same time, we'll examine the rhetoric and terminology used in media and everyday conversation to characterize other people's dialects and voices along with all the ways this usually diverges from linguistic reality.

Each week, we'll cover one ‘voice’ (e.g. accent, dialect, social group, etc.) and read about its linguistic characteristics along with the ways those characteristics influence our social judgements. We'll also examine the ways that particular voice is portrayed, discussed, or criticized in popular media. Students will write short essays (500-800 words) each week and grades will be based on those essays as well as participation in class and canvas discussion threads.