This course introduces the tools, techniques, as well as current research on the approach to language as a dynamical system, which seeks to fruitfully integrate linguistic theory, psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and historical linguistics through the means of mathematical modeling. Topics include: string processing, dynamical systems and stability, stochastic processes, mathematical models of population dynamics, and dynamical models of language learning, processing, and change.

Topics in Phonetics

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.

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.

In this course, we study formal mathematical tools for the analysis of language that help us understand and classify the complex structures and rules that constitute language and grammar. These tools include set theory, formal language and automata theory, as well as aspects of logic, and will be applied to the syntax and semantics of natural language. In addition to learning something about formal tools for analyzing language, this will also enhance your general skills in analytical reasoning.

Students approaching the dissertation level will explore with faculty frontier areas of research on linguistic change and variation. Topics addressed in recent years include: experimental investigation of the reliability of syntactic judgments; the development of TMA systems in creoles; transmission of linguistic change across generations. The course may be audited by those who have finished their course work or taken for credit in more than one year.

How do people form social impressions of others based on subtle patterns in their linguistic behavior? How do people shape their use of language to adapt to different social contexts and reflect their own identities? And what kinds of cognitive processes allow people to learn and use these sociolinguistic skills? Sociolinguists are increasingly turning to experimental methods to answer these exciting but complex questions. In this class, students will gain an up-to-date familiarity with major results in the experimental sociolinguistics literature, an awareness of the wide range of methods for sociolinguistic experimentation, and hands-on experience with the tools needed to create sociolinguistic experiments.

How do people form social impressions of others based on subtle patterns in their linguistic behavior? How do people shape their use of language to adapt to different social contexts and reflect their own identities? And what kinds of cognitive processes allow people to learn and use these sociolinguistic skills? Sociolinguists are increasingly turning to experimental methods to answer these exciting but complex questions. In this class, students will gain an up-to-date familiarity with major results in the experimental sociolinguistics literature, an awareness of the wide range of methods for sociolinguistic experimentation, and hands-on experience with the tools needed to create sociolinguistic experiments.

This course describes current theorizing on how the human mind achieves high-level cognitive processes such as using language, thinking, and reasoning. The course discusses issues such as whether the language ability is unique to humans, whether there is a critical period to the acquisition of a language, the nature of conceptual knowledge, how people perform deductive reasoning and induction, and how linguistic and conceptual knowledge interact.

The purpose of this course is to explore the relationship between linguistic structure and the use of language for artistic purposes. The syllabus is organized as a sequence of units, each built around a particular theme. These include the sound structure of poetry (meter, rhyme, and other linguistic patterns in Jabberwocky, the Odyssey, Shakespeare, the Troubadours, and others); how precise linguistic data can be used to solve an outstanding literary problem (determining the approximate date when Beowulf was composed); and the structure of folktales of various cultures and of narratives of everyday experience.