To this day, we have found no evidence of a language developing in total isolation from other languages. Most languages arein constant contact with other languages with the consequence that they can shape and influence each other. However, everylanguage evolves in a distinct linguistic ecology and this means that the circumstances of language contact and the socioculturalrelationships involved in each contact situation vary considerably, leading to a range of different outcomes. This course offers athorough introduction to the field of contact linguistics including a detailed overview of contact situations and their linguistic andsocial consequences. The topics under study are: bilingualism (including code switching), multilingualism, morpho-syntactic andphonological transfer, structural diffusion, convergence, pidginization & creolization, language shift and language death. We willparticularly focus on the cognitive processes involved in contact situations and will explore them, using descriptive, theoretical andexperimental approaches.

A general introduction at the graduate level to the analysis of sentence structure. The approach taken is that of contemporary generative-transformational grammar.

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.

First half of a year-long introduction to the formal study of phonology. Basic concepts in articulatory phonetics; the distribution of sounds (phonemes and allophones); underlying and surface forms, and how to relate them using both ordered-rule and surface-constraint approaches. The survey of theoretical topics in this term includes distinctive features (context, organization, underspecification); the autosegmental representation of tone; and the theory of phonological domains and their interaction with morphological and syntactic constituency. Emphasizes hands-on analysis of a wide range of data.

Speech: its linguistic transcription, its quantitative physical description, and its relationship to the categories and dimensions of language structure and use. The physical basis of speech: acoustics, vocal tract anatomy and physiology, hearing and speech perception, articulation and motor control. Phonetic variation and change. Prosody: stress, intonation, phrasing speech rate. Phonetic instrumentation, the design and interpretation of phonetic experiments, and the use of phonetic evidence in linguistic research, with emphasis on computer techniques. Introduction to speech signal processing. Speech technology: introduction to speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, speech coding. This course will emphasize the phonetics of natural speech, and its connections to issues in other areas of linguistics and cognitive science.

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

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.

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.

This course provides an introduction to formal semantics for natural language. The main aim is to develop a semantic system that provides a compositional interpretation of natural language sentences. We discuss various of the aspects central to meaning composition, including function application, modification, quantification, and binding, as well as issues in the syntax-semantics interface. The basic formal tools relevant for semantic analysis, including set theory, propositional logic, and predicate logic are also introduced.

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