LING

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 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.

Seminar on Sound Change. One of the great mysteries of linguistics is the so-called actuation problem (Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog 1968), that is, what causes the inception of language change, if the linguistic conditions favoring particular changes are always present? Recent work has drawn on interspeaker variation for a solution to the actuation puzzle. The main impetus for considering individual differences in the context of sound change comes from the need to build a linking theory that bridges the gap between the emergence of new linguistic variants and their eventual propagation. This seminar will explore sources of individual linguistic differences, and the role they may play in the initiation and propagation of sound change. By “individual differences”, we refer to those psychological, sociological, genetic and/or behavioral differences between the individuals who make up a speech community at the levels of production, perception and cognitive representation. Some questions we will consider in detail at this seminar include: How do individual differences affect variation? How do they affect the initiation, phonologization, and propagation of changes? How do they relate to community patterns?

This course serves as a graduate-level introduction to the study of sociolinguistic variation. We explore the three waves of linguistic variation and how differences in language-use connect with larger ideological categories such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and locality. This course is designed to explore sociolinguistics from a quantitative variationist approach, while drawing on theory from linguistic anthropology. Graduate students will read peer-reviewed journal articles in the field, design their own research project on a sociolinguistics' topic, as well as acquire practical skills in the field including performing sociolinguistic interviews, transcribing, and analyzing morphosyntactic or sociophonetic variables.

This course is intended for students with a strong background in phonology. We will explore the major themes of phonological theory from 1870 to today, focusing on such questions as the distinction between phonology and morphophonology, the nature of phonological representations, and the character of hard and soft contraints on phonological representations.

This is the second in a two-course sequence designed to provide a foundation in the scientific study of all aspects of linguistic meaning. The second quarter focuses on the syntax-semantics interface and cross-linguistic semantics. The class will introduce in detail a theory of the way in which the meaning of complex linguistic expressions is formed compositionally from the meaning of constituent parts, and the interaction of semantic and syntactic composition. This theory will form the basis for exploring some empirical questions about the systematicity of cross-linguistic variation in the encoding of meaning.

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 introduces students to experimental and computational methods used in linguistic research. Students will gain foundational knowledge of experimental design, stimuli creation, procedure, and data collection and analysis through hands-on practice. Students will design their own research projects, identify appropriate experimental and/or computational methods, and apply them to investigate their questions. Students will learn to use PCIbex (a web-based platform for constructing experiments), R, and Python throughout the process. Familiarity with R/Python/JavaScript is helpful but not required.

This course is a continuation of Introduction to Syntax (LING 20201).

An introduction to the comparative study of the Indo-European languages.  We will survey the major branches of the Indo-European family and discuss various aspects of PIE grammar as it is currently reconstructed.