2023-24

This is the first in a two-course sequence designed to provide a foundation in the scientific study of all aspects of linguistic meaning. The first quarter focuses primarily on pragmatics: those aspects of meaning that arise from the way that speakers put language to use, rather than through the formal properties of the linguistic system itself, which is the domain of semantics. However, a central goal of the course will be to begin to develop an understanding of the relation between pragmatics and semantics, by exploring empirical phenomena in which contextual and conventional aspects of meaning interact in complex but regular and well-defined ways, and by learning analytical techniques that allow us to tease these two aspects of linguistics meaning apart.

M W 1:30pm-2:50pm

This course introduces cross-linguistic phonological phenomena and methods of analysis through an indepth examination of fundamental notions that transcend differences between theoretical approaches: contrast, neutralization, natural classes, distinctive features, and basic non-linear phonological processes (e.g., assimilation, harmony, dissimilation).

T Th 9:30am-10:50am

Language is used in music a whole lot –from sophisticated, poetic lyrics to the nah nah nahs, it sure has a significant place. Have you wondered how exactly different pieces of languages are used in different kinds of music? Are there rules and limitations? In this class we are going to take a tour through a wide array of linguistic and musical traditions in order to try and answer that question. We will combine aspects of theoretical linguistics (specifically prosody, phonology and phonetics) and core musical concepts (pitch, melody, rhythm) to better understand how language is used in the musical world. Some of the topics that we will explore together include: tones and melody, prosody and rhythm, musical languages, the distributions of vocables, and tastes of more advance topics such as melisma and polyrhythm. We will also learn to present on musical and linguistic topics and develop a general appreciation of the unique languages and musical traditions from diverse socioeconomic, geographic and historical backgrounds. Prerequisites: Intro to Phonetics and Phonology, as well as general knowledge of music theory.

M W 4:30pm-5:50pm

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.

T Th 9:30am-10:50am

The course seeks to bring together two sub-disciplines within linguistics: historical linguistics and formal semantics. Both of these sub-disciplines have evolved from distant intellectual fields: the first comes from the philological world, while the second has its origins in the world of mathematical logic. Recently, there has been a rapprochement between these fields dealing mostly with the study of changes of meaning, grammaticalization and reanalysis. This course aims to examine the research paradigms that attempt to integrate them and explore new methodologies for building bridges between them. The course will focus on examples from Hebrew, but there is no requirement of Hebrew, and studies and examples from many other languages will be provided as well. 

M W 3:00pm-4:20pm

This course is an introduction to topics at the intersection of computation and language, oriented toward linguists and cognitive scientists. 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. Our goal in this quarter is for students to leave the course able to engage with and evaluate research in cognitive/linguistic modeling and NLP, and to be able to implement intermediate-level computational models.

M W 1:30pm-2:50pm

With more than a quarter of the languages of humanity, the linguistic diversity of Africa represents a richness in terms of world heritage and linguistic description, but also a challenge for trans-community communication and for the integration of small minorities in larger national communities. Additionally, the persistent use of former colonial languages in most official functions may constitute an impediment, with regard to productive communication between educated elites and ordinary community members and the involvement of the latter in national development. The present course addresses these different issues in a descriptive perspective and through open discussions about potential resolutions in terms of language valorization and language planning. 

At the end of the course, the students will be able to classify African languages of wider communication in their respective families and identify key features of the latter; identify and discuss potential issues and / or advantages relating to the use of those languages in connection with endogenous development of African communities.  

This is a general introductory course with no specific prerequisites. 

T Th 2:00pm-3:20pm

The field of Linguistic Landscapes examines the public display of languages, dialects, and writing systems: who is the author and audience of such messages? which languages are chosen for official signage? what can we learn about present or past multilingualism? what is conveyed by nonstandard dialect forms or stylized writing? In this course students will collaborate on creating an online map of Chicago with geo-tagged images. At least three weekend days will be spent on field trips to Chicago neighborhoods.

T Th 9:30am-10:50am

You can nail a postcard to the wall with a dart but you can’t microwave it with anything other than a microwave. This seems not to be a fact about nails and microwaves, but rather about English verbs that are derived from nouns.  Is it a random fact, or does it correlate systematically with other facts about verbs derived from nouns that a linguistic theory should account for? This class is an introduction to basic concepts and issues in the study of word meaning within theoretical linguistics. It explores grammatical regularities in word meaning, what kinds of information can be grammatically encoded by words, how the meaning of a word can determine the word’s syntactic distribution, and how it relates to the inferences people draw from the utterances in which a word occurs. The course will demonstrate that addressing questions of lexical meaning draws on the full resources of linguistic theory and methodology. 

MW 3:00pm-4:20pm

T Th 12:30pm-1:50pm