Courses Offered

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Linguistics Courses We Offer

Linguistics is a Bachelor of Arts. In addition to the major, students must complete the general education and bachelor degree requirements, including the BA language requirement. In order to declare linguistics as a major or minor, you need to make an appointment with an advisor. You will work with your advisor to select electives that meet your needs and interests.

Below are course suggestions for the following interests:

Cognitive Science Computational Linguistics Phonology Syntax Psycholinguistics Semantics Discourse Analysis or Pragmatics General Theoretical Overview TESOL / Language Teaching

Getting Started in Linguistics

Linguistics Foundation Course option for major, Introductory course for minor, TESOL Certificate course, fulfills HF
This Foundation Course is an introduction to linguistic study through the lens of taboo language, a pervasive part of all languages. Surveys topics in modern linguistics by studying taboos in various languages. Students sensitive to obscene words are discouraged from enrolling, as are students with only a prurient, non-scholarly interest in taboo language.
[Typically offered online fall, spring, and summer]

Linguistics Foundation Course option for major, Introductory course for minor, TESOL Certificate course, fulfills BF
The course is an introduction to the nature of human language from modern perspectives in linguistics. Focuses on sounds, words, and sentences through analysis of data from various languages, as well as social factors in language variation and language acquisition by children and adults. Additional topics may include: language change through time, language processing, and the relationship between language and culture.
[Typically offered online and in person fall, spring, and summer]

Language, Culture, and Society

TESOL Certificate course, fulfills IR
The purpose of this course is to investigate the spread of English as an international language: its historical development, socio-cultural diversity, and linguistics variation. In addition to numerous readings on varieties of English, which can be found throughout the world (e.g., Indian English, Singaporean English, Chicano English, etc.), topics related to educational linguistics within a World Englishes paradigm will also be addressed in order to better understand considerations related to the English language teaching in international contexts.

[Typically offered online fall, spring, and summer]

Fulfills HF and IR
This course examines the ways in which a human language reflects the ways of life and beliefs of its speakers and the extent to which language has influence on culture. We will also explore issues of linguistic identity, language contact, and language death. Languages and cultures from around the world, including endangered languages and their cultures, will be discussed. In addition, we will cover basic linguistics concepts.
[Typically offered fall and spring]

Fulfills BF and QB
This course investigates popular beliefs about language and discusses the perspective of modern linguistics concerning those beliefs.
[Typically offered fall and spring]

Fulfills DV and HF
Explores the theory and practice of communication across languages and cultures to increase understanding of cultural differences that influence communication and enhance appreciation of the diverse ways of communicating in different cultures. Topics may include: language and identity, verbal communication, non-verbal communication, perception, cultural values, history and its cultural impact, and worldview.
[Typically offered fall, spring, and summer]

Variation is an integral feature of any language. Language varies within speakers, across speakers, and over time. A great deal of this variation is socially structured, meaning that there exist meaningful interrelationships between language variation and social factors such as region, age, gender, class, ethnicity, identity, style, etc. In this class, we will systematically explore how language variation reflects social structures and constructs social identities. We will also discuss how standard language ideologies have been used to invalidate ways of speaking and disempower speakers of marginalized varieties. Students will also be introduced to basic quantitative concepts and methods used in sociolinguistics research.

This course will present an overview of forensic linguistics with an emphasis on the areas where linguistics and the law intersect. We will especially focus on the nature of legal language, language and disadvantage before the law, the expression of defendants' rights, linguistic methods applied to statutory interpretation, and the role of language in the legal process.

The Sounds of Language

Required for Linguistics Major, required for Linguistics Minor, prerequisite: LING foundation course
Analysis of the sounds of the world's spoken languages, with a focus on their articulatory, acoustic, and perceptual properties. Analysis of the systematic organization of speech sounds in the world's languages. Additional topics may include the phonetics and phonology of signed languages, the acquisition of phonetics and phonology by children and adults, and social variation in language production and comprehension.
[Typically offered fall and spring]

Prerequisite: LING 4010
An introduction to subcomponents of nonlinear phonology: syllable phonology, prosodic and metrical phonology, autosegmental phonology, and feature geometry. Also treated are phonological interfaces with morphology and syntax, and preliminary comparisons between rule-based and constraint-based models of phonology. Includes an exploration of the phonetic bases for phonological generalizations, as well as the phonetic detail of their expression.

The Structure and Meaning of Language

Required for Linguistics major, required for Linguistics minor, prerequisite: LING foundation course
Introduction to the structure and organization of sentences and phrases in natural language. The course builds on data from a variety of languages to explore variation and similarity in linguistic structures. Students learn terminology, problem solving and logical argumentation.
[Typically offered fall and spring]

Prerequisite: LING 4020
This course builds on the knowledge and skills attained in LING 4020. The course refines the theoretical framework of LING 4020 and applies it to new linguistic data. Topics may include case assignment, argument structure, movement or issues at the syntax-semantics interface.

Prerequisite: LING 4020
Introduction to the study of meaning of phrases and clauses. Meets with LING 6030.

How Languages are Learned and Processed

This class familiarizes students with tools (e.g., regular expressions, NLTK) used to find, retrieve, identify, tag, manipulate and analyze data from primary/in-the-field sources and established corpora. Students are introduced to ideas fundamental to Natural Language Processing, including Finite State Automata, parsing techniques, token identification, and the incorporation of statistical information for automated token tagging and identification.

Prerequisite: LING foundation course Meets with LING 6024.
This course is an introduction to child language acquisition, with special attention to first language acquisition. The course discusses the process of language acquisition (both typical and atypical); misconceptions concerning acquisition; properties of the language produced and perceived by children; and accounts of the differences between children and adults in language competence / performance.

This course overviews the goals of and approaches to the study of second language acquisition (SLA), covering the historical foundations of the field, its relationship to linguistics, methodologies used to elicit and analyze learner data, and major theories of SLA. Themes include the effects of language instruction, social factors, individual learner differences, input, and interaction on the acquisition of additional languages. Students engage with the primary research literature, collect and analyze learner data, and develop final projects on SLA topics.

Prerequisite: LING foundation course
This course surveys core issues in the field of psycholinguistics. Throughout the course we will study how humans understand and produce language in real-time and how these complex abilities develop in infants and adults second-language learners. Topics may include, sounds (categories and speech perception), words (lexical access), sentences (structural ambiguity; dependency resolution), and their development.

Prerequisite: LING foundation course or LING 4020 or co-requisite LING 4021. Meets with LING 6300.
A survey of different subfields of computational linguistics. Topics include information retrieval, natural language processing, machine translation, and computer-assisted language learning. Students examine how linguistic concepts like syntax and morphology are articulated in a computational environment for specific purposes, such as text search. Basic programming knowledge helpful but not required.

Department of Linguistics

College of Humanities