Undergraduate Courses

Words as tools for discovering properties of the human mind. How words are formed of and form various units. Experiments exploring judgments about word interpretation.

Discourse patterns among diverse social groups in institutional and interpersonal settings; interrelationships among language practices and gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity; social structures and cultural values as reflected in language policies and practices. 

Familiarization with ASL and fingerspelling. Covers visual and gestural communication, comprehension through receptive language skills, basic conversational proficiency, general insights into American Deaf culture.

Increased development of inflectional and non-manual behavior patterns presented with incorporation of selected aspects of Deaf culture and community within receptive and expressive conversations.

Empirical study of the sounds and structures of human language; syntax and semantics; language change; linguistic universals.

Language within cognitive science: speech physiology and acoustics, language acquisition, reading, language disorders, perception and mental representation of words, linguistic diversity and computer analysis of speech.

Study of human linguistic competence and technologies that simulate it. Phonetics, vibration and signal processing, speech recognition, neural networks.

A survey of topics in phonology and morphology

Prerequisite: LING 210

A survey of topics in syntax.

Prerequisite: LING 210

Introduction to meaning in natural language and the methods from logic applied to its study.

Prerequisite: LING 210

Introduces the breadth of possible communication disorders with a particular focus on the duties of the professionals who assist people with these disorders.  Explores both the diagnostic criteria and common interventions for disorders such as Language Impairment, stuttering, swallowing, and dementia.

Recommended Preparation: LING 210

The emergence of new languages, spoken and signed, in socio-historical situations, where linguistic input is degraded and insufficient to support the ordinary language acquisition process.

Analysis of the formal properties of linguistic expressions of number with the goal of understanding the structures that underlie language and numerical reasoning.

Introduction to the world’s linguistic diversity; number of languages spoken and where; grammatical structure and social function of selected languages.

Study of language as a complex natural system that requires elaborate mental computation.

Advanced study of topics in phonology.

Prerequisite: LING 301

Advanced study of topics in syntax.

Prerequisite: LING 210, LING 302

Topics in the theory of meaning in natural language.

Prerequisite: LING 303

Universal characteristics of child language; stages of acquisition of phonology, syntax, semantics; processes and dimensions of development; psychological mechanisms; communicative styles.

Crosslisted as PSYC 405

Experimental and theoretical aspects of how spoken and written language is produced and understood, learned during childhood, and affected by brain damage.

Prerequisite: LING 210 or PSYC 100

Analysis of atypical language and language pathologies throughout the lifespan and their relevance to current linguistic and cognitive science theory. 

Prerequisite: LING 210 or PSYC 100

Language and society: theory and methods in sociolinguistics; dimensions of language variation including gender, identity, class, age, region; personal-level interactions to national-level language policies.

Prerequisite: LING 210

An overview of the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic structures of English as they relate to the theoretical literature on language acquisition. 

Theories of second language acquisition in children and adults; comparison of first and second language acquisition including psychological, social, and individual factors.

Prerequisite: LING 210

Practical classroom approaches to children’s language; relationships between writing, reading, and speaking; social and regional dialects; traditional, structural, and generative-transformational grammars. 

Not available for major or minor credit

Linguistic principles which bear on the interpretation of government statutes and the litigation of legal disputes. Speech act theory; ambiguity; courtroom discourse; contracts and advertisements; jury instructions; the Plain Language Movement.

Familiarization with the articulation and transcription of speech sounds. Also vocal tract anatomy, acoustics, speech technology, non-English sounds, perception. Includes laboratory exercises.

Principles of cognitive development, learning, and motivation applied to the development of literacy: includes tutoring a child two hours per week.

Crosslisted as PSYC 433
Prerequisite: PSYC 336

Overview of methods used to identify voices on the basis of their characteristic speech patterns.

The nature of communication, meaning, reference, truth, necessity, speech acts, convention, and language.

Crosslisted as PHIL 465

Introduction to historical-comparative word study; history of ideas concerning language relationships; types of semantic change; hidden metaphors in English word-stock.

Topics of current interest at the crossroads of philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and linguistics.

Crosslisted as PHIL 467

Analysis of grammatical structures of an individual language.

Elicitation techniques and methodological principles; recording and analysis of phonological, syntactic, and semantic structures; practical approaches to procedures used in urban and rural settings.

Runs concurrently with LING 540

Individual research and readings. Not available for graduate credit. 

Writing of the honors thesis. 

Registration is restricted to honors students

Investigation of selected topics in linguistics.