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.
T Th 12:30-1:50
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.
TR 2:00 - 3:20
Students focus on broadening their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in this course.
Day/times: TBA
Swahili is the most popular language of Sub-Saharan Africa, spoken in most countries of Eastern and Central Africa by more than 50 million people. Swahili is characterized by the typical complex Bantu structure. However, it is particularly easy to pronounce and fast learned. The Elementary Swahili series is designed to help students acquire communicative competence in Swahili and a basic understanding of its structures. The course presents basic phonological, grammatical, and syntactic patterns of Kiswahili. Through a variety of exercises, students develop communicative functionality in listening, speaking, reading and writing. Emphasis is put on dialogues and role-plays, individual and group presentations, and the use of audiovisual and web-based resources. Swahili culture and African culture in general are an important component of the course. At the end of the elementary course series, the students are able to communicate efficiently in everyday life situations, write and present short descriptive notes about elementary pieces of verbal creation (documentaries and video series in Swahili). This course allows fulfilling the non-Indo-European language requirement.
TTH, 11:00-12:20 PM
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.
W 3:00pm-4:20pm
This seminar will explore the many ways that language influences and is influenced by the environment. Appropriate for those interested in the socio-cultural foundations of language and language-use, infrastructural dimensions of communication and interaction, and existence as semiotic.
Th 2:00pm-4:50pm
Causation stands at the heart of all sciences, and as such, philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists explore the exact nature of this concept as they seek to understand how causal structures are represented in the human cognitive systems. This course aims to understand what causative constructions are, what they assert, what they presupposed and to what extent they differ one from the other. In addition, it will explore how the semantics of these linguistic expressions are related to the way we model our causal knowledge of the world. In this context we will explore the uniqueness of the linguistic inquiry about causation and how it corresponds with studies on causation in philosophy and in cognitive sciences. In the course we will also consider typological studies, with focus on causative constructions in English and in Hebrew.
W 11:30am-2:20pm
This course will cover the basic methods for experimental studies, including experimental design, data collection and statistical analysis. To demonstrate different design and analysis tools, we will look at data set from different types of studies, including self-paced reading, acceptability judgment, eye tracking, ERP, etc. Students will also gain hands-on experience on different paradigms.
T Th 12:30pm-1:50pm
Among topics discussed in the first half of the sequence are the formal structure of semiotic systems, the ethnographically crucial incorporation of linguistic forms into cultural systems, and the methods for empirical investigation of “functional” semiotic structure and history.
T Th 2:00pm-3:20pm
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.
T Th 2:00pm-3:20pm
