Results for LINGUIST

The human capacity for language is able to support a staggering diversity of languages. But is anything possible in a human language, and is there anything that is common to all languages? Looking past the vast surface differences, linguists have discovered deep commonalities among the languages of the world as well as strict limits on the observed variation and on what a possible human language is. In this seminar, we will seek to uncover the building blocks of language and the laws that govern their interactions. Our goal will be to reach an understanding of the ways in which languages are systematically alike and different, as well as of the nature of language in general. We will investigate a variety of topics, including crosslinguistic differences and similarities with respect to word order, the grammatical structure of questions, and how languages mark subjects and objects. We will explore the structure of both sentences and words, identifying and studying their fundamental properties. In this pursuit, we will rely on data from a range of languages, such as English, Navajo, Zulu, and many others. This seminar will teach you how to view language as an object of scientific study, introducing you to central concepts and methods of linguistics (with a particular emphasis on syntax) along the way. It will give you the tools to describe and analyze even unfamiliar languages, and will teach you to construct explicit hypotheses about how language works and to test them empirically. There are no prerequisites for this course and no experience with linguistics will be assumed; the course is Socratically taught and there will be no textbook.

Practical approach to teaching English to non-native speakers. Teaching principles and the features of English which present difficulties. Preparation of lessons, practice teaching in class, and tutoring of non-native speaker.

Course description: A data-driven introduction to the study of generative syntax through an in-depth investigation of the sentence structure of English. Emphasis is on central aspects of English syntax, but the principles of theory and analysis extend to the study of the syntax of other languages. The course focuses on building up syntactic argumentation skills via the collective development of a partial formal theory of sentence structure, which attempts to model native speaker knowledge. Satisfies the WIM requirement for Linguistics and the WAY-FR requirement. Prerequisites: none (can be taken before or after Linguistics 121B). The discussion section is mandatory.

Introduction to basic concepts and issues in the linguistic study of word meaning. The course focuses on the core semantic properties and internal organization of the four major word classes in natural languages: nouns, adjectives, prepositions, verbs. This course draws on material from English and other languages to illustrate the range of word meanings found across languages and to investigate possible word meanings. Prerequisites: Linguist 1 or equivalent or permission of the instructor. Linguist 130A is not a prerequisite for this course.

A good ad takes the language we all share and manipulates it in creative, sometimes unique ways to influence our thoughts and our behavior. This course explores the range of techniques that advertisers use to express propositions that we consumers will notice, enjoy, and accept. Because advertising is quick to pick up on new trends, tracing the changes over the past century will allow us to re-experience the huge shifts in culture and media that have happened since then. The most effective advertisers understand us really well. Their choice of words, structure, image, and sometimes sound together form a careful composition. By taking apart some great past ads, we'll indirectly be looking at ourselves, as seen by the advertiser. Many of the techniques in ads are adapted from our own normal linguistic behavior. For example, think of how you adjust your vocabulary and tone to the person you're talking to, whether a friend, a professor, or a parent. This lecture course will include weekly input from students, who will present examples to form the basis for discussion and discovery.

The study of phonetic aspects of sociolinguistic variation and the social significance of phonetic variation. Acoustic analysis of vowels, consonants, prosody, and voice quality. Hands-on work on collaborative research project. Prerequisite: 110 or equivalent, or consent of instructor.

Performance with language (speaking, reading, writing, listening, translating or interpreting) is used to measure a person's proficiency or achievement level in the language. Language performance is also used to measure other human characteristics, including psycho-social states and traits. The course will review basic methods in language measurement and cover their use as applied in education, psychology, and commerce. Topics include both traditional and automatic methods for assessing speaking, reading, writing, affect, and language disorders. Students will develop, apply, and evaluate a language test.

Designed for undergraduates beginning or working on research projects in linguistics. Participants present and receive feedback on their projects and receive tips on the research and writing process.

An introduction to constructing and using phonologically annotated corpora to test phonological hypotheses. Hands-on experience in corpus manipulation and phonological modeling.

This course introduces contemporary approaches to syntactic theory. Focus is on a few central topics of current interest such as ellipsis, binding, locality, movement, case and agreement, among others. Prerequisites: Linguist 222B or permission of the instructor.

Presentation of ongoing research in syntax and morphology. May be repeated for credit.

Expands on 130A/230A. Detailed study of selected topics in formal semantics and pragmatics. Prerequisites: LINGUIST 130A/230A or permission from instructor.

Discussion of topics at the interface of natural language semantics and psychology of reasoning, such as conditionals, causal language, the language of uncertainty, generics, and syllogistic reasoning.

Over the past ten years, linguists have become increasingly interested in testing theories with a wider range of empirical data than the traditionally accepted introspective judgments of hand-selected linguistic examples. Consequently, linguistics has seen a surge of interest in psycholinguistic methods across all subfields. This course will provide an overview of various standard psycholinguistic techniques and measures, including offline judgments (e.g., binary categorization tasks like truth-value judgments, Likert scale ratings, continuous slider ratings), response times, reading times, eye-tracking, ERPs, and corpus methods. A particular focus will be placed on a problem that runs through all measures and techniques: that of generating an appropriate linking hypothesis from theoretical predictions to an expected empirical response pattern. Students will discuss research articles and gain hands-on experience with experimental design and implementation, data management, analysis, and visualization in R.

The nature of iconicity in language, with a focus on the role of sound symbolism in sociolinguistic variation.

The study of phonetic aspects of sociolinguistic variation and the social significance of phonetic variation. Acoustic analysis of vowels, consonants, prosody, and voice quality. Hands-on work on collaborative research project. Prerequisite: 110 or equivalent, or consent of instructor.

Panini's "Astadhyayi", the most complete generative grammar of any language yet written, is the source of many of the principles and formal techniques of modern linguistic theory. Remarkably, in Pa 'n.ini's work these emerge just from jointly maximizing empirical coverage and minimizing description length. We review the overall organization of his grammar and its motivation, the levels of representation, the types of rules and constraints, and the principles that govern their application and interaction. Among the specific aspects of the analysis that we will examine are the thematic role-based syntax, the lexicalist analysis of word-formation and inflection, and the stratally organized phonology. Course is 4 units. May be taken for fewer units with prior approval from instructor.

Introduction to spoken language technology with an emphasis on dialogue and conversational systems. Automatic speech recognition, speech synthesis, dialogue management, and applications to digital assistants, search, and spoken language understanding systems. Covers state-of-the-art approaches based on deep learning as well as traditional methods. Prerequisites: CS 124, 221, 224N, or 229

Text information retrieval systems; efficient text indexing; Boolean, vector space, and probabilistic retrieval models; ranking and rank aggregation; evaluating IR systems; text clustering and classification; Web search engines including crawling and indexing, link-based algorithms, web metadata, and question answering; distributed word representations. Prerequisites: CS 107, CS 109, CS 161.

Performance with language (speaking, reading, writing, listening, translating or interpreting) is used to measure a person's proficiency or achievement level in the language. Language performance is also used to measure other human characteristics, including psycho-social states and traits. The course will review basic methods in language measurement and cover their use as applied in education, psychology, and commerce. Topics include both traditional and automatic methods for assessing speaking, reading, writing, affect, and language disorders. Students will develop, apply, and evaluate a language test.

Restricted to students in the doctoral program. Student presentations of research toward qualifying papers. May be repeated for credit.