Linguistics

This introductory level course is designed for students who have no background in linguistics, with some new topics for students who do. The course addresses the basic question "What is Language?" from a broad variety of perspectives including linguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, sign language linguistics and gesture study. We will consider questions such as: What elements are found in all human languages? Are they systematically organized or random? Are some languages/dialects better than others? What is the relationship between written and spoken language? How does manual gesture relate to spoken language, and to sign language? How do languages develop? Die? How are they related? In exploring these questions we will confront a variety of common misperceptions about language. Each lecture has reading assignments drawn from the textbook and published articles. Class discussion will be encouraged as much as possible.

PREREQUISITES: None.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Fall

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2014

This course introduces how language is used and perceived to mark social and cultural characteristics of an individual or group of individuals. We will examine how one’s social identity is constructed, which linguistic cues are used consciously to denote different social identities, and how most linguistic cues delineating social groupings are below conscious awareness. This course will discuss topics on prescriptive and descriptive perspectives of language, standardization, dialects, accents, pidgins and creoles, social stratification, and social, racial and linguistic profiling.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course will investigate various aspects of language as used by members of sexual minority groups, focusing on language of and about gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people, including "reclaimed epithets" (e.g., 'dyke' and 'queer'), gender vs. sexuality vs. sex, and the role of language in creating /maintaining sexual categories and identities.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

This course investigates the relationship between language and culture at the interface of linguistics and anthropology. It examines the ways in which language • reflects the perception of the world, ways of life and beliefs of its speakers • creates rituals and maintains social ties • is used by people of different ages, genders, social classes, and ethnicities We will discuss hypotheses that try to explain the nature of relationship between language and culture and then turn to a wide variety of topics which are relevant for both linguists and anthropologists. These include, for instance, kinship systems and language, language of perception (e.g. colors, spatial relations), culture and language change/language variation, writing systems, and intercultural communication.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2015

The course examines the use advertisers make of language in selling their products and how it affects our perceptions of the product and ourselves. The emphasis is on learning about linguistic practice. The course will appeal to those who are curious about the central role language plays in the art of persuasion presented as advertising. The course touches upon the structure of language only insofar as it is relevant for understanding advertising as a form of social action. The acquired linguistic tools will help us to understand how commercial messages achieve their effect, regardless of their origins: business, culture or grass roots movements.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course offers a critical examination of how linguistic analysis figures in legal issues and practices, a growing field known as forensic linguistics. Topics include speaker identification, the use of questions in eliciting testimony, translation and interpretation in the courtroom, and legal language. Emphasis is on understanding and assessing linguistic argumentation and how it is applied (and sometimes misrepresented and misapplied) in the domain of law.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Fall

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2011

This course introduces students to the study of the structure of human language. We will cover the six core areas of linguistic investigation: Phonetics (articulation, acoustics, and perception of speech sounds), Phonology (sound patterns), Morphology (internal structure of words and their organization in the mental lexicon), Syntax (internal structure of phrases and sentences), Semantics (word and sentence meaning), and Pragmatics (language use in context). The course focuses on developing skills in the areas of linguistic data analysis and interpretation of linguistic data in ways that aim to address theoretical and empirical issues in the study of language.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Fall Spring

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course is a comprehensive review of the grammar of Modern Standard English. The course will be of interest to those who wish to sharpen their language skills, or to know more about the workings of the English language whether for practical, cognitive or creative ends. Drawing on work in mostly pre-theoretical, descriptive linguistics this course reveals the mechanics of Standard English structure, with occasional detours into the finesse of usage across registers (dialect to slang). Students will learn to develop the ability to see patterns in grammar, as well as its structural possibilities and limits. Assignments will regularly involve reflection on form, usage and speaker judgments. Through a final project, students will investigate some aspect of an English variety available to them. Throughout, students will be working with their data samples of English to explore how speaker choices lead to particular grammatical structures or yield ungrammaticality. Background in linguistics or grammar not needed.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

This course looks at the varieties of English used primarily by and among African Americans. We will first explore and discuss the linguistic features (lexicon and grammar) of African American English (AAE). We will also investigate the ways in which AAE is being utilized in popular culture. Additionally, we will look at AAVE’s connection to African languages and creoles. Finally, this course will look at the issues connected to AAVE and attitudes towards this variety and its effects on teachers’ expectations and students' progress; linguistic profiling and discrimination in employment and housing.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course is designed to give an introduction to the principles of linguistic variation and change, and to examine their practical application in the interdisciplinary subfields of historical linguistics and historical sociolinguistics. Topics covered include diachrony and synchrony, genetic relations, the comparative method and language classification, sound change, morphological, syntactic and semantic change, borrowing, types of language contact, areal linguistics, and linguistic variation and social stratification.

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2015

The development of the English language from the Anglo Saxon period on up, focusing on texts from representative periods.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

Introduces children's language development, including the acquisition of phonology, syntax, and semantics. Focuses on the acquisition of a first language by young children, comparing the acquisition of a variety of spoken and signed languages to find possible universal principles of language learning.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course introduces students to the principles underlying sound systems in human language. Attention will be given to articulatory phonetics, with some discussion of acoustic phonetics; practice in the production, recognition, and transcription of sounds in various languages of the world, and to the fundamentals of phonological analysis and argumentation through hands-on investigation of language sound systems.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Fall

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

This course introduces students to the principles underlying sound systems in human language. Attention will be given to articulatory phonetics, with some discussion of acoustic phonetics; practice in the production, recognition, and transcription of sounds in various languages of the world, and to the fundamentals of phonological analysis and argumentation through hands-on investigation of language sound systems.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

Overviews the nature and processing of human languages, including comparisons between language and animal communication systems, the biological bases of human language, and the cognitive mechanisms used in producing, understanding, and learning language.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

Examines how the comprehension and production of language is implemented in the human brain. Uses evidence from neuropsychological and brain imaging studies to consider the following questions: What is the network of brain areas that subserves language processing? What are the specific functions of these areas? What happens when these brain areas are damaged? What is the timing of brain activity in these areas during language processing? Finally, how do the brain areas involved in language processing overlap with those involved in other complex cognitive processes?

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2014

This introductory course examines the grammatical structure of sentences from the standpoint of transformational grammar. The course develops the basic techniques of syntactic analysis in order to develop a working grammar of a (fragment of) English. LIN 220W partially satisfies the Upper-Level Writing requirement for the Linguistics major. Linguistics majors should take the W version of the course.

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This introductory course examines the grammatical structure of sentences from the standpoint of transformational grammar. The course develops the basic techniques of syntactic analysis in order to develop a working grammar of a (fragment of) English. LIN 220W partially satisfies the Upper-Level Writing requirement for the Linguistics major. Linguistics majors should take the W version of the course.

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course introduces students to the basics of the analysis of meaning in natural language. The first section focuses on devices that motivate certain forms to take on the meanings they have. The second section of the course moves on to discuss how meanings combine to form meanings for larger units—how words and phrases combine to form sentence meanings. Using logical notation we illustrate the formal analysis of natural language meaning in terms of truth-conditions. We will discuss the basics of set theory, and investigate how meanings represented in these terms correlate with the syntactic and lexical structures of sentences of natural language. Students of graduate standing or those with strong formal backgrounds may consider starting with LIN 265/465 instead, for which this course is ordinarily a prerequisite. This course counts towards satisfying the core course requirement for majors.

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Fall

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

The course examines the structure and definition of the linguistic unit "word", its typology, and the relationship of the morphological component to other levels in the grammar. The course includes an introduction to analytical techniques with emphasis placed on an examination of data from a range of languages. The building blocks of words will be analyzed and topics such as affixation, reduplication and inflectional and derivational morphology will be covered. We will examine the properties of words and how they fit into the larger structure of linguistic knowledge, including the relationship between words and syntactic structure (ex., phrases and sentences) and the relationship between words and phonological structure (ex., phonological rules and prosodic structure).

PREREQUISITES: LIN110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Fall

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

This course is intended to provide participants with an overview of research in an area of phonetics and phonology. Issues vary from term to term but may cover areas in segmental, metrical and intonational phonology and the phonology/phonetics interface. This term we will be focusing on the phonological and sociolinguistic aspects of sound change. We will begin with foundational papers on the topic of sound change from both a historical and synchronic perspective. Students will learn about linguistic variation and ongoing change locally in the Inland North dialect area through the analysis of their own interview data. Past and recent studies of the Inland North will provide a framework for learning about the linguistic and social motivations of sound change.

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110, LIN 210

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course investigates the study of word-meaning in current linguistics and cognitive science. We do not only investigate the meanings of lexical items such as verbs, nouns, adjectives, and prepositions, but also other categories of words, including: function words, discourse particles, and expressives (such as, "Ouch!"). We examine theories of word-meaning, and examine how word and vocabulary may vary between languages.

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2013

Examines signed languages and the cognitive constraints that shape them, through a detailed consideration of the structure of American Sign Language and other natural signed languages of the world. Includes training in sign language notation and analysis. Knowledge of sign language is required.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

The course Modern English Grammar is a systematic and rigorous survey of the structure of contemporary, general purpose, international Standard English. We survey principles governing the construction of English words, phrases, clauses and sentences, and examine elements of the English spelling system. Throughout, the course pays attention to areas of grammar that commonly come to the attention of writers and learners, with a focus how an understanding of the systematic nature of the language might yield insight into these and other phenomena.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2010

Explores the cognitive mechanisms used to speak and understand language, with a special focus on contextually situated language use. Studies the moment-by-moment processes underlying language production and comprehension, including how speakers choose words and phrases and how listeners understand them.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

An introduction to natural language processing: constructing computer programs that understand natural language. Topics include parsing, semantic analysis, and knowledge representation. CSC 447, a graduate-level course, requires additional readings and assignments. Prereqs: CSC 172 & CSC 242

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

An introduction to statistical natural language processing and automatic speech recognition techniques. This course presents the theory and practice behind the recently developed language processing technologies that enable applications such as speech-driven dictation systems, document search engines (e.g., finding web pages) and automatic machine translation. Students taking this course at the 400 level will be required to complete additional readings and/or assignments. Pre-reqs: CSC 172 and CSC 242

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2015

This course addresses linguistic research questions through data science techniques. The course will focus on developing skills to (i) acquire and process a variety of language data, from using established corpora to capturing Twitter feeds, and (ii) to investigate language use, particularly syntactic and semantic phenomena, through descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. A significant part of the course will be devoted to hands-on projects and will include developing familiarity with using the programming languages Python and R to acquire and explore linguistic data. Familiarity with statistics and/or computational linguistics is advantageous, but not necessary.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110, and either LIN210, LIN220 or LIN225

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course picks up where LIN 220 leaves off, exploring topics in natural language syntax from a cross-linguistic perspective. The goal of the course is an approach to syntax that accounts for both language-particular as well as universal constraints on language. Among the topics studied are head and phrase movement, constraints on co-reference (anaphora), elipsis, and agreement (phi features).

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110, LIN 220 or permission of instructor.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2015

This syntactic theory course examines syntactic phenomena from the perspective of phrase structure and lexicalist grammar as opposed to transformational grammar. The course will examine and develop phrase structure grammar (specifically Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar) approaches to standard syntactic problems, contrasting them where appropriate with transformational approaches. No background in non-transformational approaches will be assumed. This course can be taken as LIN 261 or as LIN 461 and is meant for linguistics majors and non-majors alike.

PREREQUISITES: LIN 220 or permission of instructor.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Fall

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2014

This course provides an introduction to experimental methods that can be used to investigate questions that are relevant for syntactic theory. We will discuss a range of methodologies, including self-paced reading, visual world eye-tracking, magnitude estimation and questionnaires. The course will be organized around several topics that have been central to syntactic research, such as anaphor resolution, ellipsis and quantifier scope in order to examine how experimental methods can complement existing work; for example, by shedding light on areas where stable judgments have traditionally been difficult to obtain, and by allowing us to investigate the time course of real-time language processing. By the end of this course students will be able to understand and critically evaluate research that uses various experimental methods, and be able to design and run their own experiments.

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110, LIN220 or permission of instructor

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

This course is an in-depth introduction to the formal analysis of natural language meaning, employing techniques that have been developed in language and formal philosophy over the last century. Issues include intensionality, quantification, tense, presupposition, plurality, the analysis of discourse, and other current issues. Familiarity with syntax, logic, and/or computation are helpful but not necessary.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110, LIN225

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

Within theoretical linguistics, pragmatics is (broadly speaking) the study of how language users convey meaning. This course covers three general areas: (1) How meaning carried by linguistic elements (such as sentences) interacts with meaning that arises from inferences about speakers’ intentions; (2) Ways of characterizing meaning, especially with respect to linguistic elements not easily handled in traditional semantic (i.e., truth-conditional) terms; (3) The role of context in determining meaning. Topics to be discussed include the relation between semantics and pragmatics, representations of context, truth-conditional and other types of meaning, presupposition; implicature and Grice’s Cooperative Principle

PREREQUISITES: LIN110, LIN225

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course covers topics at the interface of syntax and semantics. No specific syntax or semantics background is required, though the equivalent of LIN 220 is recommended.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

This course is a hands-on exploration of recent advances in computational models of meaning. Topics include implementing traditional rule-based compositional semantics, estimating meaning from large-scale corpus resources, and extracting meaning patterns through data science techniques.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110, LIN225 or LIN228

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

This is a hands-on class that introduces you to major techniques and tools in language documentation and description. You will learn how to collect and record a variety of language data through elicitation and text collection. The emphasis is then on organizing, managing, and processing these data sets for various purposes, such as building up a dictionary, annotating natural speech, and time-aligning media of different formats with computational tools such as Praat, Toolbox, and ELAN. Further, we will discuss crucial topics in language documentation such as fieldwork, ethics, and language revitalization.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110 or permission of instructor

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course explores issues related to Language Documentation which has flourished over the past decades, in part due to increasing interest in endangered languages. In contrast to traditional language description, which typically results in grammars and dictionaries, language documentation seeks to capture how language is used in its natural environment, resulting in information that is usually not found in grammars, for instance how jokes are told, how parents talk with their children, or how hunters communicate in a tropical rain forest. The course covers the major aspects of language documentation including fieldwork, language description, lexicography, text collection and processing, and computational tools for language documentation (e.g. ELAN).

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2015

Typology (Phonetic/Phonological, Morphosyntactic, Semantic, Discourse). Languages of the World: looking at the range of languages, language families and isolates across the world from a typological perspective, including typological variation within and among language families and areal features. Language in flux will also be addressed, e.g., historical changes, developmental acquisition data, competence vs. performance distinction. Language vitality topics will be covered, such as language death and language description, documentation, preservation and revitalization. The class will combine lectures led by the instructor and seminar sessions led by students.

PREREQUISITES: Instructor Permission

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2015

A seminar course for senior Linguistic majors in their last semester of coursework. This seminar is a linguistics field methods course. We will work with a native speaker to elicit data and provide a description of the grammar of that speaker's language based on our data. This course is designed for senior Linguistics majors; for interested non-Linguistics majors or those who are not in their last semester of Linguistics coursework, please contact the instructor.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110, LIN210, LIN220, LIN225.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

Investigation of special problems in linguistics.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

This course is designed to give an introduction to the principles of linguistic variation and change, and to examine their practical application in the interdisciplinary subfields of historical linguistics and historical sociolinguistics. Topics covered include diachrony and synchrony, genetic relations, the comparative method and language classification, sound change, morphological, syntactic and semantic change, borrowing, types of language contact, areal linguistics, and linguistic variation and social stratification.

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2015

No description

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

Introduces students to the principles underlying sound systems in human language. Attention will be given to articulatory phonetics, with some discussion of acoustic phonetics; practice in the production, recognition, and transcription of sounds in various languages of the world, and to the fundamentals of phonological analysis and argumentation through hands-on investigation of language sound systems.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Fall

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

This introductory course examines the grammatical structure of words and sentences from the standpoint of modern linguistic theory. The course develops the basic techniques and concepts of morphological and syntactic analysis placing particular emphasis on the ways in which semantic, morphological and lexical information interacts with the syntax. No syntax background is assumed. This course is intended for majors and non-majors alike.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course introduces students to the basics of the analysis of meaning in natural language. The first section focuses on devices that motivate certain forms to take on the meanings they have. The second section of the course moves on to discuss how meanings combine to form meanings for larger units—how words and phrases combine to form sentence meanings. Using logical notation we illustrate the formal analysis of natural language meaning in terms of truth-conditions. We will discuss the basics of set theory, and investigate how meanings represented in these terms correlate with the syntactic and lexical structures of sentences of natural language. Students of graduate standing or those with strong formal backgrounds may consider starting with LIN 265/465 instead, for which this course is ordinarily a prerequisite. This course counts towards satisfying the core course requirement for majors.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

The course examines the structure and definition of the linguistic unit "word'" its typology and the relationship of the morphological component to other levels in the grammar. The course includes an introduction to analytical techniques with emphasis placed on an examination of data from a range of languages. The building blocks of words will be analyzed and topics such as affixation, reduplication and inflectional and derivational morphology will be covered. We will examine the properties of words and how they fit into the larger structure of linguistic knowledge, including the relationship between words and syntactic structure (ex., phrases and sentences) and the relationship between words and phonological structure (ex., phonological rules and prosodic structure).

PREREQUISITES: LIN110

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Fall

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

This course is intended to provide participants with an overview of research in an area of phonetics and phonology. Issues vary from term to term but may cover areas in segmental, metrical and intonational phonology and the phonology/phonetics interface. This term we will be focusing on the phonological and sociolinguistic aspects of sound change. We will begin with foundational papers on the topic of sound change from both a historical and synchronic perspective. Students will learn about linguistic variation and ongoing change locally in the Inland North dialect area through the analysis of their own interview data. Past and recent studies of the Inland North will provide a framework for learning about the linguistic and social motivations of sound change.

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110, LIN 210

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2013

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2010

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2015

This course addresses linguistic research questions through data science techniques. The course will focus on developing skills to (i) acquire and process a variety of language data, from using established corpora to capturing Twitter feeds, and (ii) to investigate language use, particularly syntactic and semantic phenomena, through descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. A significant part of the course will be devoted to hands-on projects and will include developing familiarity with using the programming languages Python and R to acquire and explore linguistic data. Familiarity with statistics and/or computational linguistics is advantageous, but not necessary.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110, and either LIN210, LIN220 or LIN225

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course picks up where LIN 220 leaves off, exploring topics in natural language syntax from a cross-linguistic perspective. The goal of the course is an approach to syntax that accounts for both language-particular as well as universal constraints on language. Among the topics studied are head and phrase movement, constraints on co-reference (anaphora), elipsis, and agreement (phi features).

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110, LIN 220 or permission of instructor

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2015

This syntactic theory course examines syntactic phenomena from the perspective of phrase structure and lexicalist grammar as opposed to transformational grammar. The course will examine and develop phrase structure grammar (specifically Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar) approaches to standard syntactic problems, contrasting them where appropriate with transformational approaches. No background in non-transformational approaches will be assumed. This course can be taken as LIN 261 or as LIN 461 and is meant for linguistics majors and non-majors alike.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2014

This course provides an introduction to experimental methods that can be used to investigate questions that are relevant for syntactic theory. We will discuss a range of methodologies, including self-paced reading, visual world eye-tracking, magnitude estimation and questionnaires. The course will be organized around several topics that have been central to syntactic research, such as anaphor resolution, ellipsis and quantifier scope in order to examine how experimental methods can complement existing work; for example, by shedding light on areas where stable judgments have traditionally been difficult to obtain, and by allowing us to investigate the time course of real-time language processing. By the end of this course students will be able to understand and critically evaluate research that uses various experimental methods, and be able to design and run their own experiments.

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110, LIN220 or permission of instructor

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

This course is an in-depth introduction to the formal analysis of natural language meaning, employing techniques that have been developed in language and formal philosophy over the last century. Issues include intensionality, quantification, tense, presupposition, plurality, the analysis of discourse, and other current issues. Familiarity with syntax, logic, and/or computation are helpful but not necessary.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110, LIN225

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

Within theoretical linguistics, pragmatics is (broadly speaking) the study of how language users convey meaning. This course covers three general areas: (1) How meaning carried by linguistic elements (such as sentences) interacts with meaning that arises from inferences about speakers’ intentions; (2) Ways of characterizing meaning, especially with respect to linguistic elements not easily handled in traditional semantic (i.e., truth-conditional) terms; (3) The role of context in determining meaning. Topics to be discussed include the relation between semantics and pragmatics, representations of context, truth-conditional and other types of meaning, presupposition; implicature and Grice’s Cooperative Principle

PREREQUISITES: LIN 110, LIN 225

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

This course is a hands-on exploration of recent advances in computational models of meaning. Topics include implementing traditional rule-based compositional semantics, estimating meaning from large-scale corpus resources, and extracting meaning patterns through data science techniques.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110, LIN220 or permission of instructor

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2010

This is a hands-on class that introduces you to major techniques and tools in language documentation and description. You will learn how to collect and record a variety of language data through elicitation and text collection. The emphasis is then on organizing, managing, and processing these data sets for various purposes, such as building up a dictionary, annotating natural speech, and time-aligning media of different formats with computational tools such as Praat, Toolbox, and ELAN. Further, we will discuss crucial topics in language documentation such as fieldwork, ethics, and language revitalization.

PREREQUISITES: LIN110 or permission of instructor

URL: http://ling.rochesster.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

No description

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

An introduction to the field of linguistics and natural language emphasizing a theoretical perspective. Topics will cover subfields of linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2014

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

This is a graduate class on syntactic theory, focusing mainly on modern transformational approaches (minimalism) to cross-linguistic language structure phenomena. In addition to reading original research leading up to the current state of the art, the course will focus on several case studies (such as pronoun/reflexive reference resolution and ellipsis phenomena) comparing transformational and non-transformational approaches.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2013

This course examines a current issue in semantic theory, within the context of a broader theoretical approach to how natural languages meanings are to be analyzed.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2012

This seminar explores current topics in experimental phonetics and laboratory phonology. These may include speech production, speech perception and their interaction with the phonological grammar, prosody (tone, intonation), metrics and metrical phonology. Including discussion of different phonological theories such as Articulatory Phonology, Intonational Phonology, prosodic morphology, feature theory, segmental theories (vowel harmony systems), as well as user-based approaches to phonology.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

OFFERED: Spring

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2012

This seminar explores current topics in pragmatics and its interfaces with other areas including prosody, syntax, semantics. Topics may include implicature, presupposition, at-issueness, speech act theory, information structure, the dynamics of discourse, and the structure of discourse contexts. In addition to discussing recent and classical theoretical works, the seminar aims to incorporate data and theoretical insights from various perspectives including fieldwork on non-English languages, psycholinguistics, and corpus methodologies.

URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2013

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2010

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Summer 2011

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Spring 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Summer 2011

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016

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URL: http://ling.rochester.edu/courses/index.html

LAST OFFERED: Fall 2016