This course is an introduction to the scientific analysis of the structure and uses of language. Core areas covered include phonetics and phonology, morphology, the lexicon, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, with data from a wide range of languages. Additional topics include sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and language acquisition.

This course is about constructed languages (those deliberately created for artistic or political purposes; think Elvish or Esperanto) and how they relate to or differ from natural languages (which arise spontaneously in human communities; think English or Ewe). By studying and analyzing variation in natural languages, we will learn to appreciate language constructors' aesthetic, ethical, and philosophical intentions. We will survey the history and properties of existing constructed languages, as well as collaboratively construct our own class language, providing hands-on experience with language creation and diverse grammatical structures.

This course aims to improve conversation skills in ASL, review and refine knowledge of basic grammar, broaden vocabulary, develop ASL-English translation skills, and increase awareness of Deaf culture. Students will develop their ASL skills through interactive activities in class and interacting with Deaf people out of class.

This course offers intensive practice in American Sign Langauge (ASL) through learning specialized vocabulary, analyzing grammar, developing ASL-English translation skills, and discussing ASL literary works and Deaf culture.

This course investigates language in its social, cultural, political, and historical contexts. Does your native language influence your perception, your behavior, and your culture? How does your identity influence properties of your language? What happens when unrelated languages come into contact for prolonged periods? How are new languages born? Why isn't English the official language of the United States, and should it be? We will explore these questions (and more) by engaging with the often contradictory opinions of specialists and the public, as well as with the empirical realities behind these different language situations.

This course delves into the internal composition of words (morphology) across languages. What is a word? What can be inside of a word? Do all languages build words in the same way(s), with the same sorts of ingredients? How similar is word-building to sentence-building? We will engage deeply with both the empirical and theoretical side of this topic, exploring not just morphology, but also its interactions with phonology (sound systems) and syntax (sentence structure). This class will be highly interactive and hands-on, and students will develop tools of analysis and argumentation that are applicable in all areas of linguistics and beyond.

The course covers the linguistic, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, and sociolinguistic aspects of bilingualism. We examine language acquisition in monolingual and bilingual children, the notion of "critical age" for language acquisition, definitions and measurements of bilingualism, and the verbal behavior of bilinguals such as code-switching. We consider the effects of bilingualism on other cognitive domains, including memory, and examine neurolinguistic evidence comparing the brains of monolinguals and bilinguals. Societal and governmental attitudes toward bilingualism in countries like India and the U.S. are contrasted.

This course explores intonation (the melodic patterns of sentences), addressing questions like: What does punctuation (e.g., a comma) sound like? How can we measure intonation, acoustically? How is intonation different from "tone" in languages like Mandarin? How do we transcribe intonation and analyze it? Students learn how to use laboratory methods and computer software to study intonation in spoken languages. (We focus on Mainstream American English but study other languages/dialects as well.) We also examine how intonational features relate to other aspects of language, such as sentence structure, linguistic meaning, and social context.

Pronunciation of words involves more than simply stringing vowels and consonants together. This course examines how pitch, duration and intensity - the three phonetic correlates of prosodic events - are used in language to structure words. We will learn how speech sounds are organized into rhythmic patterns and how prosodic features interact with the rhythmic structure. We will explore the notions of stress, accent and tone and survey a variety of word prosodic systems from around the world. We will also consider how such systems arise and the historical transformations they may undergo.

This course provides a thorough intro to the principles and practice of linguistic fieldwork. Students will be trained in methods of language description and analysis based on data provided by a native speaker of an unfamiliar language. A wide range of topics will be covered, from data collection techniques to the theoretically informed analysis of the collected data, and all major subfields of linguistics will be involved. Course is designed for students interested in documentary/descriptive linguistic work and those interested in incorporating linguistics data into research in theoretical linguistics.

This course offers an intensive study of phonological theory and analysis, following the introduction offered in LIN 301. Both rule-based and constraint-based approaches will be introduced. The course will explore the typology of phonological properties and processes (assimilation and dissimilation, vowel and consonant harmony, tonal processes, syllable structure, stress), with examples from geographically, typologically, and genetically diverse languages. The focus will be both on description and theory.

The cognitive processes underlying the use and understanding of language, and in learning to speak. Topics include speech production and perception, grammar and meaning, knowledge and words, and pragmatic aspects of language.

This course will provide an in-depth study of the Machine Translation paradigms (direct, transfer, statistical/example, interlingua and neural network) used in state-of-the-art speech-to-speech and text-based MT systems, from computational and linguistic perspectives. Techniques for processing human languages (morphological analysis, tagging, syntactic and semantic parsing, and language generation) will be discussed. Linguistic variation across languages and its impact on computational models will be presented. Projects will involve implementing speech/text translation components, identifying their limitations and suggesting improvements.