Introduction to the study of the syntax of languages attested only in historical corpora. The course will cover methods and results in the grammatical description of such languages and in the diachronic study of syntactic change.

The second half of a year-long introduction to the formal study of natural language syntax. Topics to be covered include grammatical architecture; derivational versus representational statement of syntactic principles; movement and locality; the interface of syntax and semantics; argument structure; and other topics. The emphasis is on reading primary literature and discussing theoretical approaches, along with detailed case-studies of specific syntactic phenomena in different languages.

Second half of a year-long introduction; continues LING 530. Topics to be surveyed include syllable structure and moraic theory; the prosodic hierarchy; the properties and representation of geminates; templatic and prosodic morphology; reduplication and emergence of the unmarked; and metrical phonology (properties of stress, foot typology, and issues of constituency). Emphasizes hands-on analysis of a wide range of data.

A hands-on signal and image processing course for non-EE graduate students needing these skills. We will go through all the fundamentals of signal and image processing using computer exercises developed in MATLAB. Examples will be drawn from speech analysis and synthesis, computer vision, and biological modeling.

This is a methodology course, which focuses on how to conduct phonetics research using very large speech corpora. Topics include scripting and statistical techniques, automatic phonetic analysis, integration of speech technology in phonetics studies, variation and invariability in large speech corpora, and revisiting classic phonetic and phonological problems from the perspective of corpus phonetics.

Speech communities as a focus for the understanding of language evolution and change: language variation in time and space. The relationship between language structure and language use; between language change and social change. Populations as differentiated by age, sex, social class, race, and ethnicity, and the relationship of these factors to linguistic differentiation.

An introduction to articulatory and acoustic phonetics; phonetic transcription; basic concepts and methods of phonological analysis.

The course surveys Evolutionary Game Theory and Agent-Based Models with special reference to language. We will develop systems for modeling various types of language change as well as the dynamics of linguistic micro-variation. Topics include semantic/pragmatic cycles in signaling, the maintenance of conventional meaning, and testing for selection in language change.

This course provides an introduction to the experimental study of meaning in natural language. We begin by introducing some basic notions of formal semantics and pragmatics and review relevant technical background. Next we discuss recent developments in studying meaning-related phenomena experimentally, which, in addition to theoretical questions, involve issues in the acquisition and processing of semantic information. In the course of this, we will also introduce the basics of experimental design and relevant psycholinguistic methodology. In addition to readings and homework assignments, students will embark on a small research project (individually or jointly), which will be presented in class at the end of the semester and written up as a term paper.

Linguistics 338 investigates how quantitative methods can be combined with grammatical analysis to improve our understanding of how speaker deploy their knowledge of morphosyntactic features of their language. In the course of the semester students learn to carry out research on usage data from various varieties of English. The academic requirements for the course will consist of bi-weekly, data based assignments on the linguistic phenomenon under discussion under each course topic. The details of the assignments will be worked out through class discussion.