This class is an introduction to sociolinguistics: the subfield of linguistics that is concerned with how society interacts with language. We all have experience with language in social context, and the data we need to study it more carefully is all around us. You'll learn about how our social contexts and identities shape how we use language, which in turn influences how others perceive us. You'll also learn about how social influences on language can contribute to language change over time. This is an active learning course, so you will engage in the same kinds of activities that sociolinguists do every day: reading papers, discussing case studies, collecting and analyzing data, and writing reports about what you have learned. And just like a working sociolinguist, you will do many of these activities collaboratively with others. Topics we will cover include regional accents, language attitudes, race, gender, style-shifting, code-switching, different kinds of language change, and techniques for the quantitative analysis of sociolinguistic variation.

A general introduction to the nature, history and use of human language, speech and writing. Topics include the biological basis of human language, and analogous systems in other creatures; relations to cognition, communication, and social organization; sounds, forms and meanings in the world's languages; the reconstruction of linguistic history and the family tree of languages; dialect variation and language standardization; language and gender; language learning by children and adults; the neurology of language and language disorders; the nature and history of writing systems. Intended for any undergraduate interested in language or its use, this course is also recommended as an introduction for students who plan to major in linguistics.

A general introduction to the nature, history and use of human language, speech and writing. Topics include the biological basis of human language, and analogous systems in other creatures; relations to cognition, communication, and social organization; sounds, forms and meanings in the world's languages; the reconstruction of linguistic history and the family tree of languages; dialect variation and language standardization; language and gender; language learning by children and adults; the neurology of language and language disorders; the nature and history of writing systems. Intended for any undergraduate interested in language or its use, this course is also recommended as an introduction for students who plan to major in linguistics.

A reading course on specialized topics in linguistics. Arranged by instructor.

This seminar extends the methods and models from the formal study of language to other domains of cognition and perception including learning, memory, development, judgement and decision making, and organizational behavior in social networks. The aim to restore the centrality of language in the study of the mind and artificial intelligence.

Topics in Psycholinguistics

Selected topics either in Indo-European comparative linguistics or in historical and comparative method.

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.

The first part of the course expands the system from LING 580 to include intensional contexts. In particular, we discuss analyses of modals, attitude verbs, and conditionals, as well as the scope of noun phrases in modal environments. The second part of the course discusses a selection of topics from current work in semantics, such as the semantics of questions, tense and aspect, donkey anaphora, indefinites, genericity, degree constructions, events and situations, domain restriction, plurality and focus.

This course provides a thorough introduction to the study of Pidgin and Creole languages, including an overview of their history and development. It focuses on the socio-historical context of their genesis, their morpho-syntactic properties, diachronic development, cognitive processes at work in creole formation and the resulting linguistic make-up. The status of creoles and their use in education are also examined. In addition to an individual mid-term and final paper, students will conduct a collaborative project consisting of comparing linguistic features in a set of creoles to other languages in their environment. The class will use data from the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Structures (2013) and from Pidgin, Creoles and Mixed Languages (Velupillai, 2015) in addition to multiple other sources. Diachronic data for some of the creoles will also be examined.