Linguistics - Fall 1998

This course is a general introduction to the nature of language, its complexity and its diversity. The first part of the course will focus on the core areas of language study: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The second part of the course will focus on issues in language and society. These include such topics as dialects, American Sign Language, the acquisition of language, and the official English language movement. By the end of the course you should be acquainted with systematic methods of studying language, be aware of the fundamental similarities of all human languages as well as their startling diversity, and have an informed perspective on how issues of language impact our society.

Course requirements: Class participation, weekly homework assignments, a midterm, and a final exam.

Prerequisites: none

General Education Code: IH (Introduction to Humanities)

Phonetics was called the "indispensable foundation" for the study of language by Henry Sweet, the real-life model for Henry Higgins in Shaw's Pygmalion. What he meant was that phonetics studies the only direct physical manifestation of human language use. Writing is only an indirect manifestation&emdash;an attempt made by some culture (but no all) to record acts of speech in convenient and permanent form. Phonetics studies human speech itself.

This course emphasizes the acquisition of three related skills: recognition, transcription, and production of speech sounds. The focus is not on any particular language. Given a good grasp of phonetics, one can listen to any human language and record accurately on paper the way it sounded so that any other phonetician could read it back. This skill is extremely useful for anyone who ever plans to be in a foreign language environment, and is also applicable in a number of other domains&emdash;for instance, speech therapy, research work on machine recognition and synthesis of speech, dialect acquisition for actors, foreign pronunciation for broadcasters, and of course the study of linguistics..

There are no profound conceptual difficulties inherent in understanding and mastering phonetics. There are no prerequisites or even recommended prerequisites for the course other than belonging to the human species.

The work will involve learning a highly useful universal phonetic alphabet, doing drills and problems that require use of it, and learning the technical terminology for speech sounds and for the means of their production.

Prerequisites: none

General Education Code: IH (Introduction to Humanities)

Linguistics 52 is an introduction to generative/transformational grammar. It is also a course in English syntax and semantics (principles of sentence construction and interpretation).

This course is required of linguistics majors, and constitutes the entry course to the syntax sequence. There are no prerequisites, and no prior linguistic or other training is presupposed.

The work for the course consists entirely of homework problems. These problems will be designed to involve students in observation and analysis of linguistic data, and in the construction and testing of syntactic theories. At two times during the quarter, the problems will be more comprehensive and time-consuming, and will be called "take-home exams".

There is no text. The homework will require time and careful attention, and will usually be rather challenging. An assignment will be given at every class, due at the following class, and returned the class after that. It will be impossible to follow the course without doing the homework, and it must be done ON TIME, because the next class discussion will depend on it.

Though it is part of the required core sequence for linguistics majors, Syntax I is designed for all students interested in an introduction to a rigorous, scientific approach to language study, a better understanding of the structure of English and of language in general, or just plenty of exercise in precise thought and writing.

Prerequisites: none

General Education Codes: IH (Introduction to Humanities), W (Writing Intensive)

Linguistics 55 is an introduction to the basic principles of Chomskyan generative grammar through an analysis of the syntax of English and selected other languages.

No previous training in linguistics is assumed. The work will proceed by way of class discussion and homework assignments. There may be a small amount of reading. Course requirements: one to two homework assignments per week and a take-home final exam.

This course satisfies a core course requirement in linguistics for the Language Studies major. It does not satisfy any named requirement for the Linguistics major.

Prerequisites: none

General Education Code: IH (Introduction to Humanities)

This course will examine how language functions to mark social and political prestige or the lack of it. We will examine how prestige varieties of a language develop, and how that development is connected with political and economic developments. We will also examine what mechanisms are used in contemporary societies to maintain the position of prestige dialects and those who use them; in particular, we will examine the mythology of language purity and "correct usage" that is often an important part of the support-system for a prestige dialect. The manner in which this system of support interweaves and interacts with broader patterns of social control will also be considered.

Finally, we will also consider how similar patterns and processes are often found in bilingual communities, but with independent languages playing the role played by dialects of a single language in monolingual communities. Particular attention will be paid to the politics of bilingualism in the U.S.&emdash;past and present.

Course requirements: Readings, class-discussions, and a series of short written assignments (approximately one per week).

Prerequisites: none

General Education Code: T5 (Topical&emdash;Humanities & Arts or Social Sciences)

Phonetics and Phonology are the two branches of linguistics that deal with sound structure. While phonetics focuses on the physical manifestations of sounds and on theories of speech production and perception, phonology is concerned with the systems of rules that determine how the basic sounds of a language combine.

We will begin by discussing the internal structure of sounds and developing a precise formalism (the distinctive feature system) for representing this internal structure. We will then consider the kinds of systematic regularities in sound-combination that motivate phonological rules. The rest of the course will be devoted to three fundamental questions that can be raised about phonological rules: What is the form of these rules? How do they interact with one another? And what are the properties of the representations to which they apply?

Because phonological rules can depend on word structure, any rigorous investigation of phonology inevitably touches on this area as well. Thus, this course also constitutes an introduction to morphology (word structure).

Course requirements: There will be one or two homework problems per week, a midtern, and a final exam.

Prerequisites: Ling 20 (Introduction to Linguistics) or Ling 51 (Phonetics I).

General Education Code: W (Writing Intensive)

This course is a survey of topics in natural language processing, the construction of computer software that processes natural language input in a way that is determined by its linguistic structure. The focus will be on a limited set of techniques applicable in morphology, syntax, and semantics, ignoring the large array of applications of phonetic topics in the computer analysis and synthesis of speech. A number of classic papers and more recent contributions to the literature of computational linguistics will be studied.

The course will not in general be a programming course. Although a programming background would be a great asset (as would having taken a Computer Science course such as CMP 101, 102, 104A or 132), the object of the course will not be to provide instruction in writing computer programs, and computer programming experience is not assumed.

It will, however, be essential for every student to have at least some experience with the use of computers, and some tools for the working computational linguist will be introduced. Students will be expected to have an account on the CATS Athena cluster of UNIX machines by the time the course begins, and to have some facility with using it for electronic mail, text editing, and file and directory manipulation.

Evaluation for the course will be assigned homeworks and projects rather than by examination.

Prerequisite: Ling 52 (Syntax I) or CIS 104A (Fundamentals of Compiler Design I).

General Education Codes: none

This first quarter graduate introduction to theoretical phonology has three main parts:

(i) A brief initial phase consists of a critical review of the basic concepts of SPE phonology (Chomsky and Halle [1968]), which takes phonological representations to be nothing but a single linear sequence of feature matrices.

Focus: Distinctive feature theory and rule formalism.

(ii) Syllable theory: The next phase introduces the notion of phonological constituent structure, concentrating on the syllable and its hypothesized subconstituents, including segmental 'skeleta'.

Focus: Syllable structure, rules referring to this structure or confined to syllable-related domains.

(iii) Autosegmental phonology and feature geometry: Finally, we move on to a significantly enriched conception of phonological representations (and a simplified notion of 'rule'), exploring the motivation for a theory in which features are organized according to how they pattern in rules together, and how they are organized in time.

Focus: Tone, harmony systems, assimilation processes, etc.

Course requirements: Weekly problem sets, midterm and final.

Prerequisites: Graduate student status or consent of instructor.

General Education Code: none

This seminar will deal with advanced issues in phonological theory.

Course requirements: One research paper.

Prerequisites: Ling 212 (Phonology B).

General Education Code: none

This introduction to government binding theory focuses on phrase structure, the nature of lexical entries (including argument structure and subcategorization), passive, impersonal constructions, control and raising constructions.

Course requirements: Regular problem sets, some reading.

Prerequisites: Graduate-student status or consent of instructor.

General Education Code: none

Advanced topics in syntax drawn from the current research interests of the instructor.

Prerequisites: Ling 222 (Syntax B).

General Education Code: none

LINGUISTICS 231: Semantics A
IInstructor: Donka Farkas

This course investigates how sentences mean what they mean and how they can be used to communicate more than what they mean. We will be interested in developing precise ways of describing the possible interpretations of a sentence and how that range is related to its syntactic structure. We pursue this goal by considering three topics: (i) the lexical semantics of verbs and a theory of the semantic information in a lexical entry, (ii) the semantics of quantification and the description of scope ambiguities, and (iii) classical problems involving sense and reference and proposed solutions involving the construction of models of discourse reference. We will also make a survey of the development of the study of semantics within generative linguistics theory.

Course requirements: Written work for the course consists chiefly of two problem sets corresponding to a midterm and a final. Additionally, students must submit (and revise as directed) two short essays (squibs) on some problem of interest.

Prerequisites: Graduate student status or consent.

General Education Code: none

Revised 7/19/04.