Course Information

LSA Course Guide: Linguistics Courses

• Fall 2009
• Winter 2009
• Complete list   of Linguistics graduate courses

Graduate Course Descriptions for Fall 2009

LING 512 - Phonetics

This course introduces students to the nature of human speech production and perception and the nature of the acoustic signal that is transmitted from speaker to listener. The course goals are:

To understand fundamental principles of phonetic theory and phonetic representation. We will study current theories of the complex tasks accomplished by speakers and listeners and will arrive at a representation of speech sounds in terms of their articulatory (speaker-based), acoustic, and perceptual characteristics.

To introduce students to phonetic experimentation and modeling. Small-scale experiments will provide training in physiologic measurement, acoustic analysis, and perceptual testing, and reinforce theoretical principles by serving as empirical tests of selected claims.

To consider the relation between human articulatory and perceptual capacities and patterns in linguistic sound systems (i.e., phonology). Our exploration of issues related to this third goal will necessarily be preliminary, serving as a bridge between phonetics and future coursework that many students will take in phonology.

To provide practical experience in producing and transcribing sounds of the world's languages.

Advisory Prereq: LING. 313 or Permission of Instructor.

LING 515 - Generative Syntax

In Generative Linguistics, syntactic structure is generated by a formal rule system and by applying constraints to its output. Some of these rules and constraints have been hypothesized to be innate, or "unlearned" (most likely a species specific system). That is supported by how human language acquisition (or grammar growth) takes place, in a fast and successful way across the species, and by the observation of striking structural similarities across different human languages. Other aspects of our linguistic knowledge appear "learned", i.e. determined by an interaction between human biology and the particular linguistic experience individuals are exposed to, motivating different but constrained aspects of variation among human languages. This class explores this so-called "Principles and Parameters" approach to the analysis of human syntactic knowledge, focusing on the investigation of how various postulated ("simple") rules and constraints can interact to generate ("complex") structures, characteristic of the potentially infinite number of human language sentences one can produce (such as the one you are now reading, and understanding).

Prerequisites: For undergraduates, LING 315 and permission of the instructor. No prerequisites for linguistics graduate students. Graduate students from other departments may be allowed to enroll with permission of the instructor.

Advisory Prereq: LING 315 or Permission of Instructor.

LING 517 - Principles and Methods of Historical Linguistics

This course is an introduction to the theories and methods that enable linguists to describe and explain processes of linguistic change and historical relationships among languages. The major topics to be covered are the emergence of language families and means of establishing family relationships; sound change; grammatical change, especially analogy; language change caused by culture contacts; the Comparative Method, through which prehistoric language states can be reconstructed with an impressive degree of accuracy; internal reconstruction, a less powerful but still important method for gaining information about linguistic prehistory; and ways in which the study of current dialect variation offers insights into processes of change.

Course requirements: regular homework assignments (45%), final exam (45%), class participation (10%).

Advisory Prereq: Graduate standing, or permission of instructor.

LING 541 - Natural Language Processing

A survey of syntactic and semantic theories of natural language processing, including unification-based grammars, methods of parsing, and a wide range of semantic theories from artificial intelligence as well as from philosophy of language. Programming is optional, though a project is normally required.

Advisory Prereq: Senior standing.

LING 545 - Cognitive Anthropological Linguistics

Three parts:

• Cross-linguistics study of culturally significant lexical domains;

• Cognitive Linguistics (e.g., Langacker, Talmy) as an alternative model of language;

• Semantically-focused analysis of speech registers (e.g.. honorific, insulting).

Advisory Prereq: Undergraduates require instructor's permission

LING 613 - Advanced Phonology

In this course we discuss on current research themes in phonology, including feature theory, syllable theory, stress and intonation, the phonology-syntax interface, gradient effects, and grammaticality, with an emphasis on experimental or quantitative approach to theoretical issues. Readings will mostly consist of recent articles from journals. The main requirements are participation and a term paper.

Advisory Prereq: LING 513. Graduate standing.

LING 740 - Research in Linguistics

Through a combination of lecture, guest lecture, student presentation, discussion groups, and reading assignments, this course covers the full range of research in Linguistics, incorporating all sub-disciplines from both historical and current state-of-the art perspectives. Students will develop and enhance professional skills used for both research and teaching.

LING 792 - Topics in Linguistics

This course is an introduction to the field of contact linguistics and offers an overview of contact situations and their outcome. We examine among other topics lexical borrowing, structural diffusion, social and linguistic aspects of code switching, bilingualism, SLA and language shift, contact-induced language change, pidginization and creolization. As we cover a wide spectrum of contact situations going from slight lexical borrowing to the creation of new languages, we explore a variety of factors that define the nature of the contact such as the relationship between languages, the degree of typological similarity, the length and intensity of contact, group sizes, power or prestige languages, attitudes towards the languages and motivations to use one or the other. In the most radical form of contact situations, that of pidgins and creoles, we investigate several hypotheses regarding the cognitive processes and mechanisms which underlie their genesis and development.

LING 792 - Topics in Linguistics

This seminar focuses on Montana Salish, one of the twenty-three languages of the Salishan language family of the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, northern Idaho, western Montana). The languages of this family, all of them gravely endangered, have structural features that are unusual in the world's languages, notably consonant clusters at least as long as eight consonants, pharyngeal consonant phonemes, over a hundred lexical suffixes, very elaborate verbal morphology, and a weak lexical distinction between nouns and verbs.

The course will begin with orientation — an outline of the phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax of Montana Salish. By the second week we will begin translating and analyzing Salish texts, an activity that will occupy a portion of every class session throughout the term. By the third or fourth week, students will decide on a research project, to be carried out individually or with a research partner; possible topics might be describing a piece of Salish structure (for instance the aspect system, adjectival constructions, the transitivity system, or vowel alternations), or comparing a piece of Montana Salish structure with analogous structure in another Salishan language, or analyzing an aspect of Montana Salish history. The final research results will be presented in a term paper of 15-20 pages.

Half of the course grade will be based on class participation, including research presentations as well as participation in class discussions; the term paper will determine other half of the grade.

Advisory Prereq: Graduate standing and permission of instructor.