Courses

Students with no previous background in American Sign Language (ASL) will be introduced to basic conversational techniques in ASL, including both expressive and receptive skills.  Basic grammar and vocabulary will be covered, including explanations of the fundamental parts of a sign, proper use of fingerspelling, and the significance of non-manual features. Instruction will be supplemented with videos, allowing students to begin exploring the visual literature of the Deaf community in the United States. Readings and class discussions will acquaint students with American Deaf culture, history and education, and the historical development of ASL.

Full details for ASL 1101 - American Sign Language I

In this course the students learn the skill of writing at the university level. Instructors offer themes for their courses within their own special areas of expertise.  

Full details for LING 1100 - FWS: Language, Thought, and Reality

Overview of the science of language, especially its theoretical underpinnings, methods, and major findings. Areas covered include: the relation between sound and meaning in human languages, social variation in language, language change over time, universals of language, and the mental representation of linguistic knowledge. Students are introduced to a wide variety of language phenomena, drawn not only from languages resembling English, but also from many that appear to be quite unlike English, such as those native to the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific.

Full details for LING 1101 - Introduction to Linguistics

An introduction to the essentials of Sanskrit grammar. Designed to enable the student to read classical and epic Sanskrit as soon as possible.

Full details for LING 1131 - Elementary Sanskrit I

Yiddish language and linguistics, including aspects of its morphology, syntax, and phonology. Also the history of the Yiddish language, and sociolinguistic topics.

Full details for LING 2241 - Yiddish Linguistics

Review of grammar and reading of selections from Sanskrit epic poetry and narrative prose.

Full details for LING 2251 - Intermediate Sanskrit I

An introduction to the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Proto-Indo-European and the chief historical developments of the daughter languages.

Full details for LING 2261 - Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics

This course explores both syntax (how words and phrases are combined into sentences) and semantics (how the meanings of words, phrases, and sentences are interpreted). The course aims to give students to the ability to address questions regarding syntactic and semantic properties of languages in a rigorous and informed fashion. Topics covered include phrase structure, grammatical relations, transformations, semantic composition, modification, quantification, and the syntax/semantics interface. Emphasis throughout the course is placed on forming and testing hypotheses.

Full details for LING 3303 - Introduction to Syntax and Semantics

Old Norse is a collective term for the earliest North Germanic literary languages: Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish. The richly documented Old Icelandic is the center of attention, and the purpose is twofold: the students gain knowledge of an ancient North Germanic language, important from a linguistic point of view, and gain access to the medieval Icelandic (and Scandinavian) literature. The structure of Old Norse (Old Icelandic), phonology, and morphology, with reading of selections from the Prose-Edda, a 13th-century narrative based on the Eddaic poetry. 

Full details for LING 3315 - Old Norse I

An introduction to the language and culture of the Cayuga (Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫʼ) people. Basic language instruction provided in an immersive learning environment, focusing on the relationship of language and culture to plants and growing.

Full details for LING 3324 - Cayuga Language and Culture

An introduction to some of the main issues in the philosophy of language. Topics may include names, definite descriptions, belief ascriptions, truth-conditional theories of meaning, pragmatics, and metaphor. Both historical and contemporary readings are considered.

Full details for LING 3332 - Philosophy of Language

In this class we will discuss the properties of truth-conditional semantics, with a focus on those phenomena that have been used to question the adequacy of such systems. The course starts of by discussing the fundamental (formal) properties of truth-conditional semantics, and the notion of interpretation relative to a model. Then, we will explore different aspects of the grammar of natural languages that have been invoked against such semantic systems, such as vagueness and degree expressions, presuppositional content, indexicals and lexical semantics, a.o.

Full details for LING 3333 - Problems in Semantics

Independent study of linguistics topics not covered in regular curriculum for undergrads.

Full details for LING 3390 - Independent Study in Linguistics

Provides an introduction to phonological theory. The empirical basis, theoretical approaches, and relevant literature are explored through extensive data analysis and critical reading.

Full details for LING 4401 - Phonology I

An advanced introduction to syntactic theory within the principles and parameters/minimalist frameworks. Topics include phrase structure, argument structure (unaccusative verbs, unergative verbs, double object constructions), principles of word order, and the binding theory.

Full details for LING 4403 - Syntax I

Overview of the history of the Japanese language followed by intensive examination of issues of interest to participants. Students should have reading knowledge of Japanese.

Full details for LING 4411 - History of the Japanese Language

This course provides advanced instruction in phonetic analysis and experimental methodology. Students learn about various theories of speech perception, production, and cognitive representation. This provides a background in which students develop an original research project. The goals of this course are for students to gain a conceptual understanding of phonetic analyses and to acquire practical experience in using phonetic analyses to explore cognitive dimensions of speech.

Full details for LING 4419 - Phonetics I

Introduces methods for theorizing about meaning within generative grammar. These techniques allow the creation of grammars that pair syntactic structures with meanings. Students look at several empirical areas in detail, among them complementation (combining heads with their arguments), modification, conjunction, definite descriptions, relative clauses, traces, bound pronouns, and quantification. An introduction to logical and mathematical concepts used in linguistic semantics (e.g., set theory, functions and their types, and the lambda notation for naming linguistic meanings) is included in the course.

Full details for LING 4421 - Semantics I

This course constitutes an introduction to natural language processing (NLP), the goal of which is to enable computers to use human languages as input, output, or both. NLP is at the heart of many of today's most exciting technological achievements, including machine translation, automatic conversational assistants and Internet search. Possible topics include methods for handling underlying linguistic phenomena (e.g., syntactic analysis, word sense disambiguation and discourse analysis) and vital emerging applications (e.g., machine translation, sentiment analysis, summarization and information extraction). 

Full details for LING 4474 - Natural Language Processing

This course provides structure and guidance to students doing an honors thesis in linguistics. The course consists of biweekly meeting of all honors thesis writers with the course instructor. Students will prepare presentations and written materials including topic, background, outline, methodology for honors project for class presentation and discussion. The course also covers aspects of linguistics research methodology.

Full details for LING 4491 - Honors Research Workshop I

Directed honors thesis research for students working on an honors thesis, taken with the student's honors thesis chair or other committee member.

Full details for LING 4493 - Honors Thesis Research

An introduction to the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Proto-Indo-European and the chief historical developments of the daughter languages.

Full details for LING 6261 - Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics

In this class we will discuss the properties of truth-conditional semantics, with a focus on those phenomena that have been used to question the adequacy of such systems. The course starts of by discussing the fundamental (formal) properties of truth-conditional semantics, and the notion of interpretation relative to a model. Then, we will explore different aspects of the grammar of natural languages that have been invoked against such semantic systems, such as vagueness and degree expressions, presuppositional content, indexicals and lexical semantics, a.o.

Full details for LING 6333 - Problems in Semantics

Provides an introduction to phonological theory. The empirical basis, theoretical approaches, and relevant literature are explored through extensive data analysis and critical reading.

Full details for LING 6401 - Phonology I

An advanced introduction to syntactic theory within the principles and parameters/minimalist frameworks. Topics include phrase structure, argument structure (unaccusative verbs, unergative verbs, double object constructions), principles of word order, and the binding theory.

Full details for LING 6403 - Syntax I

This course provides advanced instruction in phonetic analysis and experimental methodology. Students learn about various theories of speech perception, production, and cognitive representation. This provides a background in which students develop an original research project. The goals of this course are for students to gain a conceptual understanding of phonetic analyses and to acquire practical experience in using phonetic analyses to explore cognitive dimensions of speech.

Full details for LING 6419 - Phonetics I

Introduces methods for theorizing about meaning within generative grammar. These techniques allow the creation of grammars that pair syntactic structures with meanings. Students look at several empirical areas in detail, among them complementation (combining heads with their arguments), modification, conjunction, definite descriptions, relative clauses, traces, bound pronouns, and quantification. An introduction to logical and mathematical concepts used in linguistic semantics (e.g., set theory, functions and their types, and the lambda notation for naming linguistic meanings) is included in the course.

Full details for LING 6421 - Semantics I

Introduction to the grammar of Old Irish. Reading from selected Old Irish glosses and prose works.

Full details for LING 6623 - Old Irish I

Introduction to the grammar of Old Irish. Reading from selected Old Irish glosses and prose works.

Full details for LING 6624 - Old Irish II

The phonetics data analysis workshop provides students with practice in analysis and visualization of phonetic data, using Matlab, R, and Praat. Experiment design and statistical methods are emphasized.

Full details for LING 6692 - Phonetic Data Analysis Workshop

An independent study for graduate students.

Full details for LING 7701 - Directed Research

Addresses current theoretical and empirical issues in computational linguistics.

Full details for LING 7710 - Computational Seminar

Addresses current theoretical and empirical issues in semantics.

Full details for LING 7711 - Semantics Seminar

Seminar discussing linguistic theory, field methodology and language documentation.

Full details for LING 7719 - Interface Seminar

Topics in Current Linguistic Theory: Topics of current research that cross sub-disciplinary boundaries.

Full details for LING 7727 - Topics in Current Linguistic Theory