Linguistics

An introduction to the study of language from a scientific perspective. The course is divided into three units: language as a system (sounds, morphology, syntax, and semantics), language in context (in space, time, and community), and language of the individual (psycholinguistics, errors, aphasia, neurology of language, and acquisition). Workload: lecture, weekly homework, and final examination.

Of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages – representing migrations and historical developments thousands of years old – the majority are oral, little-documented, and increasingly endangered under the onslaught of global languages like English. This course will take the unprecedented, paradoxical linguistic capital of New York City as a lens for examining how immigrants form communities in a new land, how those communities are integrated into the wider society, and how they grapple with linguistic and cultural loss. Interdisciplinary with an experiential learning component, the course will focus on texts, materials, encounters, and fieldwork with three of the city’s newest and least-studied indigenous immigrant communities (indigenous Latin Americans, Himalayans, and Central Asians).Indigeneity, though often invisible or perceived as marginal in global cities like New York, is in fact pervasive and fundamental. Cities now constitute a crucial site for understanding migration and cultural change, with language a vehicle for culture. Studying cultures only in situ (i.e. in their homelands) risks missing a crucial dimension. Students will be immersed in stateless, oral, immigrant cultures while also gaining a hands-on critical understanding of language endangerment and urban sociolinguistic research, first through field experiences and guest speakers (Endangered Language Alliance partners) and then by going out together into communities to work on projects in small teams. The Endangered Language Alliance (ELA), where the instructor is Co-Director, was formed as a non-profit research institute in 2010 as a forum for researchers, community members, activists, artists, and other New Yorkers to come together to support indigenous and minority languages. ELA’s video recordings provide first-hand testimony of endangered languages in the global city – in indigenous languages with English translation – available in few other places. Those texts will be central to this course, supplemented by the new,first-ever, detailed language map of New York City being produced by ELA.

The ability to speak distinguishes humans from all other animals, including our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. Why is this so? What makes this possible? This course seeks to answer these questions. We will look at the neurological and psychological foundations of the human faculty of language. How did our brains change to allow language to evolve? Where in our brains are the components of language found? Are our minds specialized for learning language or is it part of our general cognitive abilities to learn? How are words and sentences produced and their meanings recognized? The structure of languages around the world varies greatly; does this have psychological effects for their speakers?

Prerequisites: LING UN3101 Language, like all components of culture, is structured and conventional, yet can nevertheless change over time. This course examines how language changes, firstly as a self-contained system that changes organically and autonomously, and secondly as contextualized habits that change in time, in space, and in communities. Workload: readings & discussion, weekly problems, and final examination.

Prerequisites: LING UN3101 Syntax - the combination of words - has been at the center of the Chomskyan revolution in Linguistics. This is a technical course which examines modern formal theories of syntax, focusing on later versions of generative syntax (Government and Binding) with secondary attention to alternative models (HPSG, Categorial Grammar).