Graduate Program

Term Schedule

Fall 2020

Number	Title	Instructor	Time
LING 404-1 History of Linguistic Thought Arshia Asudeh MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM
This course looks at key ideas in linguistics, starting in Babylon and Ancient China and working towards the study of meaning in modern linguistic theory and philosophy of language. Among the topics we will look at are: writing and its influence on grammatical traditions; the advent of historical linguistics, linguistic phylogeny, and the comparative method; European structuralism; American structuralism; variation within and across languages; the rise of generative grammar; Chomsky’s philosophy of linguistics, including competence and I-language; literal meaning and beyond. Students will be expected to read a selection of primary literature and participate actively in class discussion. The course will be assessed by essays (essay questions and readings lists for each essay to be provided). Prerequisites: LING 410 OR LING 420. Location Online Room 6 (ASE) (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)
LING 405-1 Historical Linguistics Maya Abtahian MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM
This course is designed to give an introduction to the principles of linguistic variation and change, and to examine their practical application in the interdisciplinary subfields of historical linguistics and historical sociolinguistics. Topics covered include diachrony and synchrony, genetic relations, the comparative method and language classification, sound change, morphological, syntactic and semantic change, borrowing, types of language contact, areal linguistics, and linguistic variation and social stratification.s Location Lattimore Room 201 (MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)
LING 406-1 History of the English Language Sarah Higley TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM
English is a huge banquet of words. Its history is one of invasions and adaptations. Brought to Britain by Germanic tribes in the 5th century, it was matured by violent and peaceful contact with other peoples and ideas. Few other languages are so accepting of neologism as English, so humongous in vocabulary, so malleable of construction. We’ll peruse texts from Old, Middle and Modern English and watch it grow from a Teutonic tongue to the powerful, ductile, and eclectic instrument it is today, spreading to other continents, colonizing, absorbing and irritating. We’ll read texts about linguistic Angst and jouissance by Alfred the Great, Aelfric, Robert of Gloucester, Chaucer, Caxton, Mulcaster, Shakespeare, Locke, Swift, Johnson, Webster, Orwell and others who praised or blamed our shifty English. Finally, we’ll grok urban dialects, vernaculars, slang, lolcat, texting, propriety and proscription. Is it “based on” or “based off of”? Does it matter? Is English in decline or poised on a new horizon? Location Online Room 14 (ASE) (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)
LING 410-2 Introdustion to Language Sound Systems Joyce McDonough MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM
The goal of this course is to provide a background for understanding the principles that underlie the structure of sound systems in human languages. Starting with the notion phoneme, the course focuses on acoustic and articulatory phonetics, as a basis for understanding phonological processes and change in linguistic sound forms. Students will acquire skills in the production, recognition, and transcription of sounds in various languages of the world. The course will serve as a foundation for work in language documentation, sociolinguistics and sociophonetics, morphology. This course can be taken as LIN 210 or as LIN 410 and is meant for linguistics majors and non-majors alike. Location Lattimore Room 201 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)
LING 425-1 Intro to Semantic Analysis Scott Grimm MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM
This course introduces students to the basics of the analysis of meaning in natural language. The first section focuses on devices that motivate certain forms to take on the meanings they have. The second section of the course moves on to discuss how meanings combine to form meanings for larger unitshow words and phrases combine to form sentences meanings. Using logical notation we illustrate the formal analysis of natural language meaning in terms of truth-conditions. We will discuss the basics of set theory, and investigate how meanings represented in these terms correlate with the syntactic and lexical structures of sentences of natural language. Students of graduate standing or those with strong formal backgrounds may consider starting with LIN 265/465 instead, for which this course is ordinarily a prerequisite. This course counts towards satisfying the core course requirement for majors. Location Hutchison Hall Room 473 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)
LING 426-1 Morphology Ur Staff MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM
The course examines the structure and definition of the linguistic unit 'word'' its typology and the relationship of the morphological component to other levels in the grammar. The course includes an introduction to analytical techniques with emphasis placed on an examination of data from a range of languages. The building blocks of words will be analyzed and topics such as affixation, reduplication and inflectional and derivational morphology will be covered. We will examine the properties of words and how they fit into the larger structure of linguistic knowledge, including the relationship between words and syntactic structure (ex., phrases and sentences) and the relationship between words and phonological structure (ex., phonological rules and prosodic structure). Location Frederick Douglass Room 403 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)
LING 440-1 Topics in Lang Var. & Change Maya Abtahian MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM
This course offers an overview of the role of language in society. Weâll examine the way spoken language varies according to the social characteristics of its speakers, focusing on age, sex, ethnicity, style, social status, and geography. We will also explore topics such as politeness theory and language planning and policy. Methods for quantitative analysis of linguistic variation will be introduced. Location Lattimore Room 531 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)
LING 448-1 Stat Speech&Lang Processing Daniel Gildea TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM
Blank Description Location Online Room 10 (ASE) (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)
LING 460-1 Syntactic Theory Joanna Pietraszko TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM
This course picks up where LIN 220 leaves off, though focusing more on topics in natural language syntax from a cross-linguistic perspective. The goal of the course is an approach to syntax that accounts for both language-particular as well as universal constraints on language. Among the topics studied are head and phrase movement, constraints on co-reference (anaphora), elipsis, and agreement (phi features). Location Gavett Hall Room 301 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)
LING 462-1 Experimental Syntax Ur Staff TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
This course provides an introduction to experimental methods that can be used to investigate questions that are relevant for syntactic theory. We will discuss a range of methodologies, including self-paced reading, visual world eye-tracking, magnitude estimation and questionnaires. The course will be organized around several topics that have been central to syntactic research, such as anaphor resolution, ellipsis and quantifier scope in order to examine how experimental methods can complement existing work; for example, by shedding light on areas where stable judgments have traditionally been difficult to obtain, and by allowing us to investigate the time course of real-time language processing. By the end of this course students will be able to understand and critically evaluate research that uses various experimental methods, and be able to design and run their own experiments. Location Lattimore Room 513 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)
LING 468-1 Computational Semantics Scott Grimm MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM
This course is a hands-on exploration of recent advances in computational models of meaning. The first part of the course will focus on implementing traditional rule-based compositional semantics in the functional programming language Haskell. We will construct a sophisticated model of formal semantics, culminating in examining the use of monads to model types of natural language meaning phenomena. The second part of the course explores distributional semantic models and their implementation, where lexical meaning is defined in terms of lexical co-occurrence, estimating meaning from large-scale corpus resources. Location Lattimore Room 513 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)
LING 470-1 Two suitcases and a microphone: Preserving linguistic and cultural diversity Nadine Grimm TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
This class is addressed to anyone interested in fieldwork involving data collection of spoken language, including for instance linguists, anthropologists, or historians. Languages and cultures are currently disappearing on an unprecedented level due to the effects of globalization and displacement of people. Minority groups are often the most affected. As languages and cultures die, we lose entire knowledge systems and communities an integral part of their identity. This class introduces you to major techniques and tools of collecting and curating language data, using it for your research purposes, and making it useful to speech communities and other scholars. We will investigate the importance of language as a social convention from an interdisciplinary perspective, including, e.g., issues in intercultural research and ethics in fieldwork. Students will design their own projects, depending on their personal interests, and receive hands-on training in audio and video recording, time-aligned annotations, data management, and archiving. Location Lattimore Room 513 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)
LING 470-2 Preserving diversity in language and culture Nadine Grimm TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM
This class is addressed to anyone interested in fieldwork involving data collection of spoken language, including for instance linguists, anthropologists, or historians. Languages and cultures are currently disappearing on an unprecedented level due to the effects of globalization and displacement of people. Minority groups are often the most affected. As languages and cultures die, we lose entire knowledge systems and communities an integral part of their identity. This class introduces you to major techniques and tools of collecting and curating language data, using it for your research purposes, and making it useful to speech communities and other scholars. We will investigate the importance of language as a social convention from an interdisciplinary perspective, including, e.g., issues in intercultural research and ethics in fieldwork. Students will design their own projects, depending on their personal interests, and receive hands-on training in audio and video recording, time-aligned annotations, data management, and archiving. Location Lattimore Room 201 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)
LING 472-1 Field Methods 2 Nadine Grimm TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM
Blank Description Location Meliora Room 205 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)
LING 491-1 472: Field Methods II Nadine Grimm –
Blank Description
LING 491-2 Master's Reading in LIN Joyce McDonough –
Blank Description
LING 491-3 Master's Reading in LIN Scott Grimm –
No description
LING 491-4 Master's Reading in Lin Arshia Asudeh –
Blank Description
LING 491-5 Master's Reading in Lin Maya Abtahian –
Created section, section number 5, removed Audit from grading bases, Updated instructor, updated minimum units, removed teaching assistant.
LING 491-6 Master's Reading in Lin Joanna Pietraszko –
Blank Description
LING 495-1 Master's Research in Ling Joyce McDonough –
Blank Description
LING 495-2 Master's Research in Ling Scott Grimm –
Blank Description
LING 495-3 Master's Research in Ling Nadine Grimm –
Blank Description
LING 495-4 Master's Research in Ling Arshia Asudeh –
Blank Description
LING 495-5 Master's Research in Ling Maya Abtahian –
Blank Description
LING 495-6 Master's Research in Ling Joanna Pietraszko –
Blank Description
LING 501-1 Linguistics Graduate Proseminar Scott Grimm M 6:15PM - 7:30PM
No description Location Lattimore Room 513 (M 6:15PM - 7:30PM)
LING 590-1 Supervised Teaching Solveiga Armoskaite –
No description
LING 590-2 Supervised Teaching Scott Grimm –
Blank Description
LING 590-3 Supervised Teaching Nadine Grimm –
No description
LING 590-4 Supervised Teaching Joyce McDonough –
Blank Description
LING 590-5 Supervised Teaching Joanna Pietraszko –
No description
LING 590-6 Supervised Teaching Arshia Asudeh –
Blank Description
LING 590-7 Supervised Teaching Maya Abtahian –
Blank Description
LING 591-2 PhD Reading Course in Ling Nadine Grimm –
Blank Description
LING 595-1 PhD Research in Ling Jeffrey Runner –
No description
LING 895-1 Cont of Master's Enrollment – –
Blank Description
LING 897-1 Master's Dissertation Joyce McDonough –
Blank Description
LING 897-2 Master's Dissertation Scott Grimm –
Blank Description
LING 897-3 Master's Dissertation Nadine Grimm –
Blank Description
LING 897-4 Master's Dissertation Arshia Asudeh –
Blank Description
LING 897-5 Master's Dissertation Joanna Pietraszko –
Blank Description
LING 897-6 Master's Dissertation Maya Abtahian –
Blank Description
LING 899-1 Master's Dissertation – –
Blank Description
LING 985-1 Leave of Absence – –
No description
LING 995-1 Cont of Doctoral Enrollment – –
Blank Description
LING 997-1 Doctoral Dissertation Jeffrey Runner –
No description
LING 999-1 Doctoral Dissertation Jeffrey Runner –
No description

Number	Title	Instructor	Time
Monday
LING 501-1 Linguistics Graduate Proseminar Scott Grimm
No description
Monday and Wednesday
LING 405-1 Historical Linguistics Maya Abtahian
This course is designed to give an introduction to the principles of linguistic variation and change, and to examine their practical application in the interdisciplinary subfields of historical linguistics and historical sociolinguistics. Topics covered include diachrony and synchrony, genetic relations, the comparative method and language classification, sound change, morphological, syntactic and semantic change, borrowing, types of language contact, areal linguistics, and linguistic variation and social stratification.s
LING 410-2 Introdustion to Language Sound Systems Joyce McDonough
The goal of this course is to provide a background for understanding the principles that underlie the structure of sound systems in human languages. Starting with the notion phoneme, the course focuses on acoustic and articulatory phonetics, as a basis for understanding phonological processes and change in linguistic sound forms. Students will acquire skills in the production, recognition, and transcription of sounds in various languages of the world. The course will serve as a foundation for work in language documentation, sociolinguistics and sociophonetics, morphology. This course can be taken as LIN 210 or as LIN 410 and is meant for linguistics majors and non-majors alike.
LING 468-1 Computational Semantics Scott Grimm
This course is a hands-on exploration of recent advances in computational models of meaning. The first part of the course will focus on implementing traditional rule-based compositional semantics in the functional programming language Haskell. We will construct a sophisticated model of formal semantics, culminating in examining the use of monads to model types of natural language meaning phenomena. The second part of the course explores distributional semantic models and their implementation, where lexical meaning is defined in terms of lexical co-occurrence, estimating meaning from large-scale corpus resources.
LING 440-1 Topics in Lang Var. & Change Maya Abtahian
This course offers an overview of the role of language in society. Weâll examine the way spoken language varies according to the social characteristics of its speakers, focusing on age, sex, ethnicity, style, social status, and geography. We will also explore topics such as politeness theory and language planning and policy. Methods for quantitative analysis of linguistic variation will be introduced.
LING 425-1 Intro to Semantic Analysis Scott Grimm
This course introduces students to the basics of the analysis of meaning in natural language. The first section focuses on devices that motivate certain forms to take on the meanings they have. The second section of the course moves on to discuss how meanings combine to form meanings for larger unitshow words and phrases combine to form sentences meanings. Using logical notation we illustrate the formal analysis of natural language meaning in terms of truth-conditions. We will discuss the basics of set theory, and investigate how meanings represented in these terms correlate with the syntactic and lexical structures of sentences of natural language. Students of graduate standing or those with strong formal backgrounds may consider starting with LIN 265/465 instead, for which this course is ordinarily a prerequisite. This course counts towards satisfying the core course requirement for majors.
LING 404-1 History of Linguistic Thought Arshia Asudeh
This course looks at key ideas in linguistics, starting in Babylon and Ancient China and working towards the study of meaning in modern linguistic theory and philosophy of language. Among the topics we will look at are: writing and its influence on grammatical traditions; the advent of historical linguistics, linguistic phylogeny, and the comparative method; European structuralism; American structuralism; variation within and across languages; the rise of generative grammar; Chomsky’s philosophy of linguistics, including competence and I-language; literal meaning and beyond. Students will be expected to read a selection of primary literature and participate actively in class discussion. The course will be assessed by essays (essay questions and readings lists for each essay to be provided). Prerequisites: LING 410 OR LING 420.
LING 426-1 Morphology Ur Staff
The course examines the structure and definition of the linguistic unit 'word'' its typology and the relationship of the morphological component to other levels in the grammar. The course includes an introduction to analytical techniques with emphasis placed on an examination of data from a range of languages. The building blocks of words will be analyzed and topics such as affixation, reduplication and inflectional and derivational morphology will be covered. We will examine the properties of words and how they fit into the larger structure of linguistic knowledge, including the relationship between words and syntactic structure (ex., phrases and sentences) and the relationship between words and phonological structure (ex., phonological rules and prosodic structure).
Tuesday and Thursday
LING 448-1 Stat Speech&Lang Processing Daniel Gildea
Blank Description
LING 460-1 Syntactic Theory Joanna Pietraszko
This course picks up where LIN 220 leaves off, though focusing more on topics in natural language syntax from a cross-linguistic perspective. The goal of the course is an approach to syntax that accounts for both language-particular as well as universal constraints on language. Among the topics studied are head and phrase movement, constraints on co-reference (anaphora), elipsis, and agreement (phi features).
LING 462-1 Experimental Syntax Ur Staff
This course provides an introduction to experimental methods that can be used to investigate questions that are relevant for syntactic theory. We will discuss a range of methodologies, including self-paced reading, visual world eye-tracking, magnitude estimation and questionnaires. The course will be organized around several topics that have been central to syntactic research, such as anaphor resolution, ellipsis and quantifier scope in order to examine how experimental methods can complement existing work; for example, by shedding light on areas where stable judgments have traditionally been difficult to obtain, and by allowing us to investigate the time course of real-time language processing. By the end of this course students will be able to understand and critically evaluate research that uses various experimental methods, and be able to design and run their own experiments.
LING 470-1 Two suitcases and a microphone: Preserving linguistic and cultural diversity Nadine Grimm
This class is addressed to anyone interested in fieldwork involving data collection of spoken language, including for instance linguists, anthropologists, or historians. Languages and cultures are currently disappearing on an unprecedented level due to the effects of globalization and displacement of people. Minority groups are often the most affected. As languages and cultures die, we lose entire knowledge systems and communities an integral part of their identity. This class introduces you to major techniques and tools of collecting and curating language data, using it for your research purposes, and making it useful to speech communities and other scholars. We will investigate the importance of language as a social convention from an interdisciplinary perspective, including, e.g., issues in intercultural research and ethics in fieldwork. Students will design their own projects, depending on their personal interests, and receive hands-on training in audio and video recording, time-aligned annotations, data management, and archiving.
LING 470-2 Preserving diversity in language and culture Nadine Grimm
This class is addressed to anyone interested in fieldwork involving data collection of spoken language, including for instance linguists, anthropologists, or historians. Languages and cultures are currently disappearing on an unprecedented level due to the effects of globalization and displacement of people. Minority groups are often the most affected. As languages and cultures die, we lose entire knowledge systems and communities an integral part of their identity. This class introduces you to major techniques and tools of collecting and curating language data, using it for your research purposes, and making it useful to speech communities and other scholars. We will investigate the importance of language as a social convention from an interdisciplinary perspective, including, e.g., issues in intercultural research and ethics in fieldwork. Students will design their own projects, depending on their personal interests, and receive hands-on training in audio and video recording, time-aligned annotations, data management, and archiving.
LING 406-1 History of the English Language Sarah Higley
English is a huge banquet of words. Its history is one of invasions and adaptations. Brought to Britain by Germanic tribes in the 5th century, it was matured by violent and peaceful contact with other peoples and ideas. Few other languages are so accepting of neologism as English, so humongous in vocabulary, so malleable of construction. We’ll peruse texts from Old, Middle and Modern English and watch it grow from a Teutonic tongue to the powerful, ductile, and eclectic instrument it is today, spreading to other continents, colonizing, absorbing and irritating. We’ll read texts about linguistic Angst and jouissance by Alfred the Great, Aelfric, Robert of Gloucester, Chaucer, Caxton, Mulcaster, Shakespeare, Locke, Swift, Johnson, Webster, Orwell and others who praised or blamed our shifty English. Finally, we’ll grok urban dialects, vernaculars, slang, lolcat, texting, propriety and proscription. Is it “based on” or “based off of”? Does it matter? Is English in decline or poised on a new horizon?
LING 472-1 Field Methods 2 Nadine Grimm
Blank Description
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday