1 - 10 of 39 results for: LINGUIST ; Currently searching autumn courses. You can expand your search to include all quarters

This introductory-level course is targeted to students with no linguistics background. It is designed to provide an overview of methods, findings, and problems in eight main areas of linguistics: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, Historical Linguistics, and Sociolinguistics. Through lectures, in-class activities, and problem sets, you will come away with an overview of various linguistic phenomena, a sense of the diversity across languages, skills of linguistic analysis, an awareness of connections between these linguistics and applications of linguistics more broadly, and a basis for understanding the systematic, but complex nature of human language. While much of the course uses English to illuminate various points, you will be exposed to and learn to analyze languages other than English. By the end of the course, you should be able to explain similarities and differences of human languages, use basic linguistic terminology appropriately, apply the tools of linguistic analysis to problems and puzzles of linguistics, understand the questions that drive much research in linguistics, and explain how understanding linguistics is relevant for a variety of real-world phenomena.

Human language affords an infinity of possible utterances. To know a language is not to know a finite list of memorized sentences - instead, not only can you produce and understand sentences never uttered before, but given any sentence you can always create a longer one. Yet, remarkably, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie this creativity are instantiated in a finite human brain. This course explores the nature of the human capacity for language and how it allows boundless creativity to emerge from limited resources. This course will teach you how to approach language as an object of scientific study, introducing you to central concepts, methods, and results in linguistics. Throughout the course you will analyze a wide variety of language data and will learn how to construct scientific hypotheses and test them empirically. A major component of the course will be the collective, hands-on construction of formal models (i.e. theories) of individuals' knowledge of their language. The course is Socratically taught and, while there will be occasional readings, there is no textbook. There are no prerequisites and no experience with linguistics will be assumed. This course is designed for anyone with an interest in language, linguistics, and/or cognitive science, as well as neighboring fields such as psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and philosophy.

As individuals, we would like to believe that we are free from biases and that we are somehow immune to acting on the social biases that we have been socialized to since birth. We would like to believe that we can report experiences accurately, recalling events as they truly happened. But, memory is faulty and stereotypes and social biases are pervasive. And, at a level beneath our own control, these biases slip in and influence our memory of events. Eyewitness memory, and the inaccuracy and unreliability of eyewitnesses, is a perfect example of this. But, what about the things we hear? Speech carries a great deal of information; packets of co-varying cues we have been raised to recognize categorically, informing us about a talker's race, accent, emotion, and gender. We have, through our ears, information about events that occur. And, we have in our minds, stereotyped expectations about how various groups of people behave and what various groups of people might say. In this course, we will explore how these two types of information (e.g., the percept of what is actually heard vs. our stereotypes about who is likely to have said what) clash together and influence 'earwitness memory'. We will read and critique journal articles, blogs, and popular science articles, think about the reliability of memory for auditory events, and we will work together to develop three well-designed thought experiments that address questions at the heart of this issue. Along the way, we will learn a bit about the acoustics of speech, social variation in speech, speech perception and spoken word recognition, memory, and experimental design and analysis. Students in this course should be committed to reading the assignments, sharing their ideas about the readings (without concern for 'being right'), and think creatively about ways we can explore the idea of earwitness memory together. While this is a one-quarter course, my goal is to pursue our thought experiments collaboratively, with any interested students in subsequent quarters.

The pronunciation of a word varies across different speakers, and even across different utterances produced by the same speaker. This course is an introduction to phonetics, covering articulation, acoustics, and perception. Students will gain basic skills in experimental phonetics, including instrumental analysis of speech production using phonetic software (Praat), interpreting behavioral responses in listening tasks, and using the International Phonetic Alphabet. By the end of this course, you will be able to (1) understand the processes involved in articulating speech sounds; (2) understand what acoustic patterns result from articulatory characteristics and how to identify visualizations of them; (3) manipulate speech samples to test how listeners experience language and categorize different speech sounds.

Introduction to the sound systems of the world's languages, their similarities and differences. Theories that account for the tacit generalizations that govern the sound patterns of languages. Prerequisite: Linguist 1 or Linguist 105

Are bilinguals merely the combination of two monolinguals? Do bilinguals think differently in each language? How do bilinguals manage the complexity of two languages in their minds and daily interactions? This course offers a theoretical exploration of bilingualism and second language acquisition through a psycholinguistic lens. Topics covered include heritage and second language acquisition, language comprehension and production, speech perception, language attrition, code-switching, and cognitive and neurolinguistic development. Through lecture discussions and hands-on analysis, students will gain a deeper understanding of the intricacies of bilingual language use and its psychological underpinnings. Prerequisites: Linguist 1, Linguist 105/205, Linguist 110, Linguist 121A/121B, Linguist 145/245

Human language is one of the most remarkable phenomena in nature. Unlike all other known forms of animal communication, language allows us to transmit virtually any kind of mental content: personal memories, ancient history, cultural traditions, imaginary worlds, complex plans, religious beliefs, mathematical proofs, moral norms, and explanations of ourselves and the universe we inhabit. The existence of language raises profound questions about the human mind and brain. What do we know when we know a language? How do we translate pressure waves in air into ideas, and vice versa? How can such a complex system be learned so quickly and universally by children? What¿s special about our brains that enables this to happen? What¿s the relationship of language to our broader capacities for thinking and social interaction? This course will introduce you to the ongoing scientific project to tackle these kinds of questions. You will both (1) become familiar with major psycholinguistic research questions and results, and (2) hone your scientific thinking about language and the human mind, developing skills necessary to identify both predictions made by psycholinguistic theories and experimental strategies for testing those predictions.

This course explores the social life of spoken language. Students learn to address the following big questions about language and society: Why do languages vary across different time periods, locations, and social groups? What do our opinions about the way other people speak tell us about society? How do our social identities and goals influence the way we speak? And how do we use language to alter our social relationships?

This course will examine the sociolinguistic aspects of English as spoken by African Americans in the United States. We will study the relationship of African American English to linguistic theory, education policy, and U.S. culture. The course has an emphasis on mitigating discrimination and improving the educational and social experiences of African Americans at Stanford and beyond.