Language

V61.0001  Baltin, Collins, Gouskova, Szabolcsi. Offered every semester. 4 points.

Nature or nurture? Linguistics is a science that systematically addresses this puzzle, and it offers a uniquely interesting support for the answer both. Language is a social phenomenon, but human languages share elaborate and specific structural properties. The conventions of speech communities exist, exhibit variation, and change within the strict confines of universal grammar, part of our biological endowment. Universal grammar is discovered through the careful study of the structures of individual languages, by cross-linguistic investigations, and the investigation of the brain. This course introduces some fundamental properties of the sound system and of the structure and interpretation of words and sentences, set into this context.

Introduction to Linguistics

V61.0002  Barker, Collins, Davidson, Gouskova. Offered every semester. 4 points.

Focuses on the core areas of grammar: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Develops analytical and problem-solving skills. Examples are drawn from various European and nonEuropean languages alongside English. Recommended for nonlinguistics majors, especially for foreign language and English majors.

Communication: Men, Minds, and Machines

V61.0003  Dougherty. Offered every year. 4 points.

Examines signs and symbols in the communication of humans, primates, birds, computers, automata, simulata, etc., and discusses definitions of sign, symbol, intelligence, artificial intelligence, mind, cognition, meaning, etc. Concerns the matter expressed by the symbol systems and the manner in which the matter is expressed: literally, abstractly, metaphorically, as a simile, by insinuation, and other methods.

Introduction to Semantics

V61.0004  Barker, Szabolcsi. Offered every year. 4 points.

Focuses on the compositional semantics of sentences. Introduces set theory, propositional logic, and predicate logic as tools and goes on to investigate the empirical linguistic issues of presuppositions, quantification, scope, and polarity. Points out parallelisms between the nominal and the verbal domains. Examines the acquisition of meaning by children learning their first language.

Introduction to Psycholinguistics

V61.0005  Davidson. Offered every other year. 4 points.

Discusses how young children acquire their knowledge of language, both in normal development and in pathological cases (specific language impairment, SLI). Introduces both the conceptual problem of acquisition (innateness, poverty of stimulus, relation of language to mind) and the work that led to the breakthroughs of the last two decades (nonnutritive sucking experiments with infants, analysis of the CHILDES data base with older children, etc.). Shows how linguistic theory and empirical research directed at first language acquisition interact. Adopts a hands-on approach.

Sound and Language

V61.0011  Davidson, Gafos, Gouskova, Guy. Offered at least every fall. 4 points.

Introduction to phonetic and phonological theory at an elementary level. Topics include the description and analysis of speech sounds, the anatomy and physiology of speech, speech acoustics, phonological processes. Students develop skills to distinguish and produce sounds used in the languages of the world and to transcribe them using the international phonetic alphabet.

Phonological Analysis

V61.0012  Prerequisite: V61.0011 or permission of the instructor. Davidson, Gafos, Gouskova. Offered at least every spring. 4 points.

Introduction to phonology, the area of linguistics that investigates how languages organize sounds into highly constrained systems. The fundamental questions include the following: What do the sound systems of all languages have in common? How can they differ from each other? What is the nature of phonological processes and why do they occur? Students develop analytical skills by solving phonological problems based on data from a wide variety of languages.

Grammatical Analysis

V61.0013  Prerequisite: V61.0001 or V55.0660 or V61.0028 or permission of the instructor. Baltin, Collins. Offered at least every fall. 4 points.

Considers the nature of grammatical rules and the relation between the grammar of a language and its acquisition by children. Also deals with the proper balance between syntax and semantics and the role of cross-linguistic considerations (comparison with other languages) in formulating the grammar of a particular language.

Language Change

V61.0014  Prerequisite: V61.0001 or V55.0660. Costello. Offered every other year. 4 points.

Introduces students to the methods of genealogical classification and subgrouping of languages. Examines patterns of replacement in phonology, morphology, and syntax. Focuses on internal and comparative phonological, morphological, and syntactic reconstruction. Considers phonological developments such as Grimm’s, Grassmann’s, and Verner’s Laws, in detail.

Language and Society

V61.0015  Guy, Singler. Offered every year. 4 points

Considers contemporary issues in the interaction of language and society, particularly work on speech variation and social structure. Focuses on ways in which social factors affect language. Topics include language as a social and political issue; regional, social, and ethnic speech varieties; bilingualism; pidgin and creole languages.

The Indo-European Family

V61.0017  Costello. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

Presents the phonological and morphological systems of Proto-Indo-European, and considers the development thereof in the major branches of Indo-European family of languages, in particular Indic, Hellenic, Slavic, Italic, and Germanic.

Bilingualism

V61.0018  Blake, Singler. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

Reviews literature on various bilingual and multilingual communities and considers major linguistic and social issues raised by the phenomenon of multilingualism.

Structure of English Vocabulary

V61.0019  Costello. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

Deals with the origins of structures of English words. Whereas 97 percent of the vocabulary of Old English was Germanic, over 80 percent of the present-day vocabulary is borrowed. This course focuses on that portion that is borrowed from the classical languages (Latin and Greek) either directly or indirectly through French. Examines the historical and sociolinguistic circumstances of borrowing, the stem-affix structure of borrowed words, together with the regularities of their pronunciation and meaning. This course relies on elementary phonology, morphology, and semantics and is recommended for nonmajors.

Sex, Gender, and Language

V61.0021  Identical to V97.0121. Vasvari. Offered every spring. 4 points.

Examines gender-based differences in language structure including hidden sexism, semantic space, the “he/man” debate, and titles/references to the sexes.

African American English I: Language and Culture

V61.0023  Identical to V11.0023. Blake. Offered every other year. 4 points.

Introduces the language behavior of African Americans. Discusses African American Vernacular English in terms of its linguistic and cultural distinctiveness, both intrasystemically and in comparison with other dialects of American English. Relates the English vernacular spoken by African Americans in urban settings to creole languages spoken on the South Carolina Sea Islands (Gullah), in the Caribbean, and in West Africa. Also approaches the subject from the perspective of the history of the expressive uses of African American Vernacular English (e.g., in signifyin’ and rappin’) and the educational, attitudinal, and social implications connected with the language.

Computational Principles of Sentence Construction

V61.0024  Prerequisite: V61.0028 or permission of the instructor. Dougherty. Offered every year. 4 points.

Introduces students to the basic computational tools available for formulating linguistic and psycholinguistic models of competence and performance. Discusses classical problems in perception and description of verb-particle constructions, questions, passives, and garden-path sentences. Considers how parsers operate in structurally different languages such as Chinese and English. Students learn sufficient computer skills (Unix, Lisp, and Prolog) to run public domain programs that model a human being’s language production and perception capacities. Students have computer accounts in the PC Lab and on a Unix system and obtain hands-on experience with artificial intelligence and expert systems programs using symbolic logical-based computer languages. Students use the Web and the Internet. They may base their research on existing programs or write their own.

Language and Liberation at Home in the Caribbean and Abroad

V61.0026  Identical to V11.0801. Blake. Offered every other year. 4 points.

Explores the linguistic and cultural transformations that took place in the Commonwealth Caribbean from 17th-century slavery and bond servitude to the present day. Focus is on the extent to which Caribbean people were given or demanded the freedom to create and maintain a postcolonial Caribbean identity. We first discuss the sociohistorical conditions that led to the creation of new Caribbean languages called “pidgins” and “creoles” as the English language was transplanted from Britain to the Third World. We then explore the relationship of the English-based creoles to the social, cultural, political, and literary/expressive aspects of the contexts in which they existed, and in which they continue to exist today in the Caribbean, as well as in Britain and the United States. As far as possible, parallels are drawn to French- and Spanish-influenced Caribbean communities.

Grammatical Diversity

V61.0027  Prerequisite: V61.0013 or permission of the instructor. Collins, Kayne. Offered every year. 4 points

Introduces the syntax of languages quite different from English, from various parts of the world. Considers what they may have in common with English and with each other and how to characterize the ways in which they differ from English and from each other.

Language and Mind

V61.0028  Identical to V89.0027. Baltin, Davidson, Gafos, Marcus, McElree, Murphy, Pylkkänen, Szabolcsi. Offered every year. 4 points.

Introduces students to the field of cognitive science through an examination of language behavior. Begins with interactive discussions of how best to characterize and study the mind. These principles are then illustrated through an examination of research and theories related to language representation and use. Draws from research in both formal linguistics and psycholinguistics.

Morphology

V61.0029  Collins. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

An introduction to study of the internal structure of words. The two main problems in morphology are (1) how to account for the surface variability of formatives (allomorphy) and (2) how to account for their combinatorial properties (morphosyntax). Beginning from the techniques and problems of structuralist morpheme analysis, two major approaches to allomorphy are introduced: the morpheme-based model and the word-based model. In morphosyntax, we concentrate on the question to what extent morphological combination is a matter of syntax vs. the lexicon. Emphasis is on constructing morphological hypotheses and linguistic argumentation. The assignments involve in-depth analyses of data from various languages.

Language in Latin America

V61.0030  Guy. Offered every other year. 4 points.

Examines the diversity of language usage in modern Latin America and considers historical perspectives as to how the present situation came about. Considers the dialectology of Latin America: how and why American varieties of Spanish and Portuguese differ from European varieties; the distribution and nature of dialect differences in different regions of the Americas. Examines sociolinguistic issues, such as class and ethnic differences in Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas, the origin and development of standard and nonstandard varieties, and the effects of contact with Amerindian and African languages. Considers Spanish- and Portuguese-based creoles and the question of prior creolization in the popular speech of Brazil, Cuba, and other areas with a substantial population of African decent. Other topics include bilingualism, code switching, language attitudes, the impact of contact with English, and the present status of indigenous languages.

Form, Meaning, and the Mind

V61.0031  Prerequisites: V61.0004 or permission of the instructor, and V61.0013. Baltin. Offered every other year. 4 points.

Deals with the relationship between cognitive organization on the one hand and the interaction between syntax and semantics in natural language. Focuses on the debate within cognitive science as to whether or not the mind is modular (divided into distinct faculties, such as language, vision, and perhaps others). Discusses the relationship of this debate to the debate within linguistics as to whether or not syntax is an autonomous component of a grammar that feeds semantics, but does not depend on semantics itself for its functioning. Examines works in cognitive science about modularity and works in linguistics that bear on the question of the autonomy of syntax.

Writing Systems of the World

V61.0033  Costello. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

The two central issues to be treated in this course are (1) how do various writing systems relate to language; and (2) whether writing affects language, and if so, how? The fundamental characteristics of writing are discussed: the communicative purpose of writing, the application of graphical marks on a durable surface, and the achievement of communication by virtue of the marks’ conventional relation to language. The evolution of writing is traced. Students compare the writing systems that evolved in Central America, China, Sumer, and Egypt, and their descendants, with respect to their relative advantages and disadvantages, from the points of view of acquisition, the representation of language, and the effective achievement of communication. Recommended for nonmajors.

Meaning and Time

V61.0034  Offered occasionally. 4 points.

We live embedded in the passage of time and conceive of time as the dimension of change. Our languages typically have various ways to refer to time, to distinguish between past and future, to describe sequences of events, and set up temporal reasoning patterns. This course deals with the expression of time and tense in different languages, and the linguistic, philosophical, and psychological questions that this investigation raises. We consider a variety of issues including the logic of time, temporal metaphors, different kinds of situations, presentation of situations, the semantics of tense, and time, tense, and aspect in narrative discourse.

Propositional Attitudes

V61.0035  Prerequisite: V83.0085 or V61.0004 or permission of instructor. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

This advanced seminar investigates the nature of linguistic meaning through an examination of the semantics of sentences that report beliefs and other attitudes toward propositions, such as “Galileo believed that the earth moves.” Such sentences have arguably proven problematic for all theories of meaning. We read and discuss pertinent papers by linguists and philosophers; and there are background lectures on related issues, such as the semantics of proper names, pronouns, and demonstratives. Registered students are required to make two substantial class presentations and write a detailed research paper.

Indo-European Syntax

V61.0036  Costello. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

Students are introduced to the study of comparative (Proto-)Indo-European syntax. Methods of reconstructing a protosyntax are presented and compared. The course deals with recent explanations concerning the origin and development of a number of parts of speech, including adverbs and prepositions, and syntactic constructions, including absolute, relative, and periphrastic verbal constructions (e.g., the passive) in Proto-Indo-European and its descendant languages. Reanalysis and grammaticalization are addressed in some detail. Questions concerning the motivation of innovations, and their implications for the overall evolution of language, are discussed.

The Syntax/Semantics Interface: Hungarian

V61.0037  Prerequisite: V61.0013 or permission of the instructor. V61.0004 is recommended but not required. Szabolcsi. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

Hungarian is known as a language that wears its semantics on its syntactic sleeve. Word order transparently identifies the topic and the focus of the sentence and disambiguates the scopes of operators like always, not, everyone, etc. This course studies Hungarian from the perspective of theoretical linguistics and asks what this language tells us about how the syntax/semantics interface works in universal grammar. It reviews the fundamentals of Hungarian morphology and syntax and discusses current literature. Not a language course.

Pidgin and Creole Languages

V61.0038  Prerequisite: An introductory linguistics course (V61.0001, V61.0002, or V55.0660) or permission of the instructor. Offered every other year. 4 points.

Examines the pidginized and creolized languages of the world. Addresses three central questions: (1) how do pidgins/creoles (P/Cs) come into being, (2) why do P/Cs have the properties that they do, and (3) why do P/Cs—regardless of the circumstances of their genesis—share so many features? The course examines P/Cs vis-à-vis other types of languages, considers the linguistic and social factors that contribute to the genesis of individual P/Cs, and investigates the linguistic characteristics of P/Cs. The course has as its geographic focus the Atlantic, i.e., creoles from the Caribbean and pidgins from West Africa, but it also considers pidgins/creoles from the Pacific.

Language in Use

V61.0041  Guy. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

Living languages in use by a community of speakers are diverse and dynamic. Individuals and groups of speakers differentiate and identify themselves by the way they use language; people can adapt their speech to different listeners in social settings; speakers develop their linguistic capabilities as they grow older. The language as a whole changes across time. This course examines language not from the standpoint of abstract structural description but from the perspective of how it is actively used in a speech community. We consider theoretical issues, such as how to model diversity in language use, and methodological issues, such as how to study language change while it is under way. We study appropriate quantitative methods for investigating variation across linguistic contexts, speakers, settings, and time. The course has a strong practical focus: students learn how to plan and conduct their own research on language use.

Romance Syntax

V61.0042  Prerequisite: V61.0013 or permission of the instructor. Kayne. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

Introduces the syntax of Romance languages, primarily French, Italian, and Spanish, but also various Romance dialects. Considers what they have in common with each other (and with English), and how best to characterize the ways in which they differ from each other (and from English).

Neural Bases of Language (to be cross-listed in Psychology as V89.0300)

V61.0043  Identical to V89.0300. Prerequisites: V89.0025 or one previous linguistics course or permission of instructor. Pylkkänen. Given every year. 4 points.

What are the brain bases of our ability to speak and understand language? Are some parts of the brain dedicated to language? What is it like to lose language? This course provides a state-of-the-art survey of the cognitive neuroscience of language, a rapidly developing multidisciplinary field in the intersection of linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience. Lectures cover all aspects of language processing in the healthy brain from early sensory perception to sentence-level semantic interpretation as well as a range of neurological and development language disorders, including aphasias, dyslexia, and genetic language impairment. Functional neuroimaging techniques are introduced, and the course includes a small lab component where students gain hands-on experience analyzing brain data.

Evolution of Intellectual Complexity

V61.0045 Dougherty. Offered occasionally. 4 points

How do human perception, cognition, language, and communication relate to the abilities of animals, fossil records, anthropological and archeological research, cave painting, and physiology? We broadly try to answer: What is a likely scenario for human evolution from animal origins? We argue (with Chomsky, Darwin, D’Arcy, Thompson, Turing, Lorenz, Gould) that evolution proceeds in large jumps (saltations) and that slow gradual evolution via natural selection (per Pinker, Hauser, Fitch, Lieberman) cannot account for human cognitive evolution. Readings focus on original works by Darwin, Wallace, D’Arcy, Thompson, Freud, Chomsky, Galileo, and Pinker and includes studies by zoologists, linguists, anthropologists, archeologists, and psychologists.

African American English II

V61.0046  Blake. Offered occasionally. 4 points

African American English is a distinct dialect of American English that has influenced U.S. and world cultures. Yet, from an educational perspective, its speakers have faced well-documented educational challenges. Explores contemporary, social, linguistic, and educational issues that arise for speakers of African American English in the United States. Topics covered include a history of African American language behavior, politics, and policies around the language, teacher education, language attitudes, culture and curriculum, and controversies about African American English in the schools. Also considers how educational issues surrounding African American English compare to other languages and dialects of English. Students have an opportunity to conduct original research.

The Language of America’s Ethnic Minorities

V61.0047  Blake. Offered every other year. 4 points.

Examines the role of language in communities in the United States, specifically within African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American populations. Explores the relationship of language to culture, race, and ethnicity. In particular, it looks for similarities and differences across these communities and considers the role that language experiences play in current models of race and ethnicity.

Linguistics as a Cognitive Science

V61.0048 Prerequisites: permission of the instructor. Offered yearly. 4 points.

This course examines the place of Linguistics within Cognitive Science from multiple perspectives. Foundational questions for a science of linguistics will be addressed both from within linguistics and from philosophy and psychology. Issues include the nature of the evidence for constructing grammars, the interpretation of grammatical rules as cognitive or neural operations, the significance of neo-behaviorist approaches to language and computational modeling for a cognitive theory of language, the connection between linguistic theory and genetics, and the importance of socio-cultural and historical variation for understanding the nature of language. Students will be expected to engage in debate over these issues bringing to the table their own background in one of the relevant disciplines as well what they learn from the assigned readings. The primary instructor will be joined for several of the lectures by guest speakers with complementary expertise.

How Concepts Become Sentences

V61.0049 Prerequisite: V61.001 or V61.0028, or permission of the instructor. Offered occassionally. 4 points.

Concepts in the human mental storage contain everything needed to describe events in the world, or to build theories about the world. But to do this, they need to combine to form propositions--representations of events. The course will follow the travel of information from mental concepts to coded concepts, which can be used by syntax to build sentences, and eventually form representations of events.

Endangered Languages

V61.0050 Given every other year. 4 points.

The languages of the world are dying off at an alarming rate. This course will investigate the causes and consequences of such language death. Each student will "adopt" an endangered language, and look into it extensively during the course of the semester.

A Cultural History of Computers, Robots, and Artificial Intelligence

V61.0051  Dougherty. Offered every year. 4 points.

Considers primary source material on the mind-body problem and on linguistic criteria for intelligence starting with Galileo and Descartes, and continuing up to the present day. Examines mechanical analogies of mind developed since 1500. Readings from Galileo, Descartes, Voltaire, Huxley, Darwin, Arnauld, Turing, Kuhn, and Penfield. Focuses on Chomsky’s Cartesian linguistics and the claim that current ideas concerning mind, language, and intelligence parallel closely those of the Cartesians of the 17th century.

Etymology

V61.0076  Identical to V27.0023. Costello. Offered every other year. 4 points.

Traces the origin and development of English words. Discusses ways in which new words are created. Introduces concepts of phonological and semantic change, which students apply in identifying cognates linking English with other language, in particular, but not limited to, Latin and Greek.

Seminar: Research on Current Problems in Linguistics

V61.0102  Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Offered occasionally. 4 points.

Variable content course; see the description of each offering at the department’s home page.

Internship

V61.0980, 0981  Prerequisite: permission of the director of undergraduate studies. In the term prior to the internship, the student must present a written description of the proposed internship that clearly indicates the linguistic content of the project. 1 to 4 points.

Independent Study

V61.0997, 0998  Prerequisite: permission of the director of undergraduate studies. 1 to 4 points each term.