Class Schedules

The aim of this course is to make you aware of the complex organization and systematic nature of language. You will be studying yourself and those around you, since you are all language users. Most of your knowledge of language, however, is unconscious, and earlier education may have given you confusing or misleading notions about language. This course is intended to clarify your ideas about language and bring you to a better understanding of its nature. You will learn more about how languages work by observing and analyzing  language(s) (from people you know, from yourself, videos, in-class data sets, social media, texting etc.)  By the end of the course you should be familiar with some of the terminology and techniques of linguistic analysis and be able to apply this knowledge to the description of different languages.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In this course you will be trained to produce and recognize (almost) all the  speech sounds which human languages make use of, and to develop a systematic way of analyzing and recording them.  We will learn how to transcribe data in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Class time will focus on practicing perceiving and producing the speech sounds found in spoken languages (vowels, tones, trills, clicks, etc). Each student will have the opportunity to conduct research on the phonetics of a language of their choice, working closely with a native-speaking consultant. This course is recommended for students of languages, linguistics, theater, music and anyone who wants to become more aware of their (and other people's) pronunciation.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

All languages have structure, and syntax is the study of how language users combine words into meaningful phrases, sentences, and conversations. The world's languages vary enormously in how they express events and describe situations, and in this class, you will learn about the many different ways in which syntax makes this communication possible. We will explore this syntactic diversity by going hands-on with real data from a variety of languages - including specific languages of your choice.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Language loss is accelerating at alarming rates. In fact, Linguists predict that only five percent of the six thousand languages currently spoken in the world are expected to survive into the 22nd century. In this course, we will examine the historical, political, and socio-economic factors behind the endangerment and/or marginalization of languages in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. We will also concentrate on the globalization of English (and other major languages), which plays a primary role in language endangerment and marginalization. Additional topics include: linguistic diversity, language policy, multilingualism (in both nations and individuals), global language conflict, and language revitalization. Students will have the opportunity to learn first-hand about these issues by interviewing speakers of an endangered and/or minority language.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Human beings have an unprecedented ability to shape the environment around them, yet the environment powerfully shapes both individuals and species. Two main questions run throughout this course: 1. How does language influence the way we think about and perceive nature, which in turn influences the way we interact with and shape nature? 2. How has our environment shaped the Language faculty and individual languages? To answer these questions, we'll start by asking, what is language and what is nature? Then we'll turn to the way that our environment has impacted the evolution of Language. Next we'll look at indigenous knowledge as it is encoded by language and the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis, which says that language influences the way we perceive the world. With this as background, we'll look at the language of environmental discourse. Next, using the metaphor of ecology, we'll examine languages as if they were organisms and analyze the ecosystems that sustain them. Knowing what makes a healthy language, we'll look at endangered languages and the connections between linguistic diversity and biodiversity.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Like Latin and Greek in Europe, Sanskrit is a highly inflected language of scholarship and revered as the perfect medium for discourse on everything from science and sex to philosophy and religion. It flourished in its classical form after the age of the Buddha (5th century BC) and served as a scholarly lingua franca in India until the Islamic period. This course serves as an introduction to the grammar an script of Sanskrit, and we will advance to a point of reading simplified texts from the classical epic Ramayana.Students will be expected to attend class regularly and spend at least ten hours a week outside class studying the grammar and vocabulary. Without this sort of effort, no progress is possible in such a complex language. In addition to the rigorous study of the language, we will consider both the role of the language in classical Indian culture and religion, and some texts from the Ramayana, looking at both English translation and Sanskrit originals.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Lexical semantics is about the study of word meaning. We will explore questions such as: How can we analyze word meanings? What kinds of meanings can words express? How are words related to each other? how do their meanings change in different contexts? How do we combine words to create new meanings? The course will provide theoretical background on key debates in word meaning, focus on different word classes like nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and examine methods used to investigate word meaning. Assignments will help students engage with the literature while exploring the meaning of words of their choice. Prerequisite(s): LING 100 or LING 104 or LING 200 or LING 205 or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Lexical semantics is about the study of word meaning. We will explore questions such as: How can we analyze word meanings? What kinds of meanings can words express? How are words related to each other? how do their meanings change in different contexts? How do we combine words to create new meanings? The course will provide theoretical background on key debates in word meaning, focus on different word classes like nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and examine methods used to investigate word meaning. Assignments will help students engage with the literature while exploring the meaning of words of their choice. Prerequisite(s): LING 100 or LING 104 or LING 200 or LING 205 or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

A linguistic survey of the Spanish language aimed at improving pronunciation and increasing comprehension of the structure of the language, deepening students' understanding of the sound system, word formation, grammar and meaning. Study will emphasize phonetics and provide an introduction to transcription, phonology, morphology and syntax, as well as provide an overview of linguistic change and geographic variation. This course satisfies the Area 3 requirement for the Hispanic and Latin American Studies major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 or SPAN 306 or consent of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An overview of research projects on the acquisition of Spanish as a second language. Students will learn about the theoretical approaches used in these studies as well as the effects of various pedagogical approaches on the development of Spanish interlanguage systems. While the focus of the course is on the acquisition of Spanish as a second language, students will gain a broad and useful understanding of different pedagogical issues directly related to the acquisition/learning process(es) of other second languages. This course satisfies the Area 3 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 309 or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course examines the language of social media through the lens of computational linguistics and natural language processing (NLP) techniques. Key topics include language variation within online communities, hate speech detection, misinformation identification, topic modeling, and the fairness and trustworthiness of language models. Designed for students interested in computational linguistics, NLP, and computational social science, this course emphasizes engagement with recent academic papers on social media language analysis. Students will critically discuss these papers and gain hands-on experience replicating their methodologies using Python libraries. By the end of the course, students will be expected to develop their own research project focused on studying social media language. Proficiency in Python programming is required for this course. Prerequisite(s): LING 100 or LING 104 or LING 200 or LING 205 or COMP 123 or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course examines the language of social media through the lens of computational linguistics and natural language processing (NLP) techniques. Key topics include language variation within online communities, hate speech detection, misinformation identification, topic modeling, and the fairness and trustworthiness of language models. Designed for students interested in computational linguistics, NLP, and computational social science, this course emphasizes engagement with recent academic papers on social media language analysis. Students will critically discuss these papers and gain hands-on experience replicating their methodologies using Python libraries. By the end of the course, students will be expected to develop their own research project focused on studying social media language. Proficiency in Python programming is required for this course. Prerequisite(s): LING 100 or LING 104 or LING 200 or LING 205 or COMP 123 or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In this course, which is required for all linguistics majors, students meet with one or more bilingual speakers of a language unknown to them, and attempt by means of elicitation and analysis of texts to understand its structure.  This course is part two of the linguistics capstone. Prerequisite(s): LING 300.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This workshop for advanced students of Japanese explores the craft and cultural implications of Japanese-to-English literary translation. It aims to give students not only a facility and sophistication in translating Japanese, but also a closer familiarity with the Japanese language itself. Through weekly translation assignments, we will examine the expressive qualities of the Japanese language, tracing major developments of prose style in the modern period and studying the socio-historical context manifested in those linguistic innovations. Our work will be informed and enhanced by engagements with theories of translation as well as essays on Japanese-to-English translation specifically. We will cover a broad range of genres, including essays, poetry, manga, and film (subtitles). The course will culminate in an original project translating a Japanese work of one's choice. Prerequisite(s): JAPA 305 - Third Year Japanese I or higher.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The aim of this course is to make you aware of the complex organization and systematic nature of language. You will be studying yourself and those around you, since you are all language users. Most of your knowledge of language, however, is unconscious, and earlier education may have given you confusing or misleading notions about language. This course is intended to clarify your ideas about language and bring you to a better understanding of its nature. You will learn more about how languages work by observing and analyzing  language(s) (from people you know, from yourself, videos, in-class data sets, social media, texting etc.)  By the end of the course you should be familiar with some of the terminology and techniques of linguistic analysis and be able to apply this knowledge to the description of different languages.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In this course you will be trained to produce and recognize (almost) all the  speech sounds which human languages make use of, and to develop a systematic way of analyzing and recording them.  We will learn how to transcribe data in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Class time will focus on practicing perceiving and producing the speech sounds found in spoken languages (vowels, tones, trills, clicks, etc). Each student will have the opportunity to conduct research on the phonetics of a language of their choice, working closely with a native-speaking consultant. This course is recommended for students of languages, linguistics, theater, music and anyone who wants to become more aware of their (and other people's) pronunciation.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Phonology is the study of how sounds and/or signs pattern in language, i.e. how they are organized into perceptual categories.  In this class we will look at data from a wide variety of languages and analyze them using several formal theories to find patterns and generalizations about phonological contrasts and alternations.  In the process, students will evaluate the explanatory strengths of each theory.  The class will emphasize the analytical skills used in solving problem sets and on how to present and justify an analysis of the dataset. Prerequisite(s): LING 104

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q1

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course aims to investigate the complex relationship between language and identity in Japanese, Asian American, and other diasporic communities. Language plays a significant role in conveying one's identity, as do other semiotic means such as clothing. By exploring scholarship that considers language as it relates to identity, students will discover how speakers/writers use their agency in expressing their identity and how identity emerges as a social and cultural phenomenon. They will learn about multiple interrelated factors that affect how speakers/writers view and use language such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and multilingualism. No knowledge of Asian languages is required.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course will introduce practical skills for carrying out linguistic research with computational methods. Students will learn to work with corpus software, regular expressions, computational tools, and large language models for processing and analyzing language data. The course will also introduce how to do the data annotation and dataset construction. By the end, students will be familiar with the workflow of conducting projects with computational methods and will develop their own research proposal. While prior knowledge of linguistics or computational methods is helpful, it is not required.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q1

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Lexical semantics is about the study of word meaning. We will explore questions such as: How can we analyze word meanings? What kinds of meanings can words express? How are words related to each other? How do their meanings change in different contexts? How do we combine words to create new meanings? The course will provide theoretical background on key debates in word meaning, focus on different word classes like nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and examine methods used to investigate word meaning. Assignments will help students engage with the literature while exploring the meaning of words of their choice. Prerequisite(s): LING 100 or LING 104 or LING 200 or LING 205 or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

When it comes to gender and English, people often think about third-person pronouns (they, she, he, ze, etc.), what others call you. In contrast, Japanese language speakers choose from a variety of first-person pronouns, what you call yourself. Some follow societal norms while others subvert them. This course examines how individuals and media creators make such linguistic choices (not just pronouns, but other expressions as well), and how these choices are fluid and based on such diverse factors as age, region, trend, rhetoric, and ideology. A very basic knowledge of Japanese is required, but all readings will be in English. Prerequisite: JAPA102 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The first prerequisite to understanding a linguistic message is the ability to decipher its code. This course is training in the decoding of grammar. Through practice in problem-solving, you will develop expertise in the grammatical systems of a wide sample of the world's language types. Prerequisite(s): LING 100 - Introduction to Linguistics, LING 104 - Sounds of the World's Languages, plus one of: LING 200 - Syntax or LING 205 - Phonology.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

A linguistic survey of the Spanish language aimed at improving pronunciation and increasing comprehension of the structure of the language, deepening students' understanding of the sound system, word formation, grammar and meaning. Study will emphasize phonetics and provide an introduction to transcription, phonology, morphology and syntax, as well as provide an overview of linguistic change and geographic variation. This course satisfies the Area 3 requirement for the Hispanic and Latin American Studies major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 or SPAN 306 or consent of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What is language and what is it for? What makes a series of sounds into a meaningful sentence? What makes a sentence true? Why is language always changing? This course will introduce students to ways in which twentieth century philosophers have attempted to provide answers to such questions. Since the philosophy of language has been so crucial to contemporary philosophy, this course also serves as an introduction to philosophical thought from the beginning of twentieth century to the present. Topics will range from more technical problems (theories of meaning, reference and truth; synonymy and analyticity; universals and natural kinds; private languages) to broader issues examining the relationship between language and culture (language games; radical interpretation; social change). Readings typically include writings by Ludwig Wittgenstein, W.V. Quine, John Searle, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault, and bell hooks. Prerequisite(s): PHIL 201, or permission of instructor

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course, students will examine the different varieties of Spanish in the US and the effects of the linguistic contact between Spanish and English. Sociolinguistic aspects relevant to language contact will be addressed, as will related issues such as immigration patterns, bilingualism, Spanglish, and bilingual education. This course satisfies the Area 3 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 and another 300-level Spanish course or consent of the instructor. SPAN 309 recommended.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials