Synchronic and diachronic systems. Analogic processes. Semantic change. Effects of contact. Internal reconstruction. Comparative method and reconstruction.

This course is a graduate seminar in neurolinguistics. We will explore language in the brain through readings and discussion.

Game Theory has provided a new way of looking at linguistic meaning, particularly pragmatics (the use of language). This course will survey the use of Game Theory in linguistics as well as develop the techniques for studying signaling behavior. We will look at the formal foundations of signaling with particular attention paid to games of incomplete information (games where even which game is being played is uncertain). This will allow us to extend pragmatics beyond Gricean conversational maxims to areas like deception and polite signaling.

The main purpose of this course is to teach students to read Old English ("Anglo-Saxon"), chiefly but not exclusively for research in linguistics. Grammar will be heavily emphasized; there will also be lectures on the immediate prehistory of the language, since the morphology of Old English was made unusually complex by interacting sound changes. In the first eight weeks we will work through Moore and Knott's "Elements of Grammar" and learn the grammar; the remainder of the term will be devoted to reading texts.

This course is an upper level undergraduate/graduate seminar in neurolinguistics. We will explore language in the brain through readings and discussions.

This tutorial allows students to deal in a concentrated manner with selected major topics in linguistics by means of extensive readings and research. Two topics are studied during the semester, exposing students to a range of sophisticated linguistic questions.

An introduction to language acquisition in children and the development of related cognitive and perceptual systems. Topics include the nature of speech perception and the specialization to the native language; the structure and acquisition of words; children's phonology; the development of grammar; bilingualism and second language acquisition; language learning impairments; the biological basis of language acquisition; the role in language learning in language change. Intended for any undergraduate interested in the psychology and development of language.

This course is an introduction to current syntactic theory, covering the principles that govern phrase structure (the composition of phrases and sentences), movement (dependencies between syntactic constituents), and binding (the interpretation of different types of noun phrases). Although much of the evidence discussed in the class will come from English, evidence from other languages will also play an important role, in keeping with the comparative and universalist perspective of modern syntactic theory.

Controlled experiments are a key element of empirical research, and they play an increasingly important role in the study of language and communication. This course will be divided into two halves. In the first half, students will be introduced to the fundamentals of how to conduct an experiment, along with a basic introduction to statistical methods. The emphasis will be on understanding the basic logic of experimental design, but special lectures will focus on the application of particular methods to the study of language. In the second half, classes will become more like lab meetings as students develop their own experimental projects from the ground up. At the end of the semester they will write up these projects as papers.