Graduate Program

LING 405 Intro to Historical Linguistics

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 stratifications.

LING 440 Language Variation and Change

This course offers an overview of the study of language variation and change. We will examine some of the ways that spoken language varies according to the social characteristics and social motivations of its speakers. Methods for quantitative analysis of linguistic variation will be introduced.

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 provides an introduction to probability and statistics for linguistics, serving as an essential foundation for linguistics students who aim to analyze experimental and corpus linguistic data. Topics include (i) elementary probability theory; (ii) elementary descriptive and inferential statistics; (iii) elementary machine learning concepts; and (iv) fixed and mixed effects models. Concepts are explored through linguistic case studies, including the analysis of formally collected judgment data, reaction times, and acoustic measurements.

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.

LING 426 Morphology

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).

LING 526 Morphological Theory

No description available at this time.

In this course, you will learn about existing theories of syntactic phenomena, how to critically evaluate them, and how to make your own proposal within a given framework. This work will develop both your analytical skills and your critical thinking about theories. Topics include argument structure, case, agreement, raising and control, and constraints on movement. Additional goals of this course are: (i) to practice reading primary syntactic literature and (ii) to develop a research project in syntax.

This course is intended to help graduate students in linguistics design and plan for independent research. Topics will include developing a research question, conducting a literature review, and designing a research plan. As necessary, we will also work on “research management,” or everything that researchers need to do alongside producing intellectual content, including presentation skills (different types of presentation), data collection techniques, writing an IRB proposal, managing research timelines, securing research funds, developing necessary software skills, maintaining a presence in the field, conducting a job search, and others. A secondary goal of the course is to provide an opportunity for graduate advising. Students may bring questions or concerns for discussion.

This is a hands-on, practical course preparing students to produce linguistic research based on data collected through elicitation. To achieve this, students will work with a speaker of an unfamiliar language and develop a research project based on the data they collect. The practical goals include: (i) obtaining familiarity with devising and refining elicitation strategies; (ii) analyzing data from an unfamiliar language; and (iii) receiving training in writing a grammatical description with appropriate terminology.