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.

Humans arrived in the Americas no earlier than 30 thousand years ago and perhaps as recently as
13 thousand years ago, yet since that time Native Americans have developed an incredible richness
and diversity of cultures and languages, with well over a thousand distinct indigenous languages.
In this course we will focus on the indigenous languages of the United States and Canada. At the
time of European contact in the sixteenth century, there were around 400 languages spoken across
the territories of these two countries, yet today only around half of these are still spoken, and of
these about 150 are only spoken by elders and in grave danger of not being passed onto younger
generations. It is estimated that only between 20 or so indigenous languages in the United States
and Canada have good prospects of being spoken natively into the twenty second century. In this
course we will survey the variety and diversity of indigenous languages and the cultural values
tied to them in the pre-contact era, and then look into the causes of their current decline in use and
what steps are being taken to reverse this and revitalize them, even languages which no longer
have any first language speakers. We will investigate the amazing diversity in the basic structures

of these languages and the meanings they can express, highlighting the difference between them
and the more familiar patterns of English. We will study how they are used in indigenous contexts,
both traditional and modern, to communicate valued sociocultural and aesthetic ends. Finally, we
will explore three indigenous languages in greater depth, two from New York State, and appreciate
some of the native oral traditions in the original languages. This course will be of interest to any
undergraduate student curious about the prehistory and subsequent Native history and ethnography
of North America.

Why is Turkish spelling easy while English looks chaotic? Why do Japanese, Hebrew, and Armenian carve
language up so differently on the page? And why are game developers and conlang fans obsessed with scripts?
This course is a hands-on tour of how writing systems work. We treat orthography as grammar: principled
mappings from sounds and morphemes to visible forms. You will learn the core toolkit (units of writing,
allography, script typology, depth and transparency, morphographemics), test it on real languages, and run
design-studio labs that evaluate or improve actual orthographies. Labs welcome creative builds: prototype an ingame
script or a conlang orthography, justify its rules, and test its usability. Light formal modeling keeps things
precise without heavy math. By the end you will be able to analyze a script, argue for design choices, and ship a
small reform or a polished worldbuilding system. Although writing systems have traditionally been sidelined in
theoretical linguistics, learning how scripts encode phonology and morphology sharpens core theory and supports
real applications, including teaching children to read and write, designing accessible orthographies, and building
effective NLP architectures. Open to undergraduates of all levels; Intro to Linguistics is a prerequisite.

This course provides an introduction to semantics, the study of meaning in language. We will explore a range of semantic phenomena, and students will learn the tools and techniques of formal semantic analysis as well as core concepts, goals, and findings of the field.

How language structure and usage varies according to societal factors such as social history and socioeconomic factors, illustrated with study modules on language contact, language standardization and literacy, quantitative sociolinguistic theory, language allegiance, language, and power.

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).