Courses by semester
Courses for
Complete Cornell University course descriptions are in the Courses of Study .
| Course ID | Title | Offered |
|---|---|---|
| LING1100 |
FWS: Language, Thought, and Reality
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 |
Fall, Spring. |
| LING1101 |
Introduction to Linguistics
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.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| LING1104 |
WIM: Introduction to Cognitive Science
This section is highly recommended for students who are interested in learning about the topics covered in the main course through writing and discussion.
Full details for LING 1104 - WIM: Introduction to Cognitive Science |
Spring. |
| LING1132 |
Elementary Sanskrit II
An introduction to the essentials of Sanskrit grammar. Designed to enable the student to read classical and epic Sanskrit as soon as possible.
|
Spring. |
| LING1170 |
Introduction to Cognitive Science
This course provides an introduction to the science of the mind. Everyone knows what it's like to think and perceive, but this subjective experience provides little insight into how minds emerge from physical intities like brains. To address this issue, cognitive science integrates work from at least five disciplines: Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, Linguistics, and Philosophy. This course introduces students to the insights these disciplines offer into the workings of the mind by exploring visual perception, attention, memory, learning, problem solving, language, and consciousness.
Full details for LING 1170 - Introduction to Cognitive Science |
Spring, Summer (six-week session). |
| LING2215 |
Psychology of Language
Provides an introduction to the psychology of language. The purpose of the course is to introduce students to the scientific study of psycholinguistic phenomena. Covers a broad range of topics from psycholinguistics, including the origin of language, the different components of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics), processes involved in reading, computational modeling of language processes, the acquisition of language (both under normal and special circumstances), and the brain bases of language.
|
Spring. |
| LING2223 |
Language and the Law
This course addresses topics including origins of legal language, linguistics in the courtroom, plagiarism, and language rights. It introduces areas of linguistics such as syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics which explicate a wide range of legal matters where both spoken and written language come to fore.
|
Spring. |
| LING2248 |
Native American Languages
This course explores the wide variety of languages indigenous to the Americas. There were thousands of languages spoken in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans and hundreds of these languages are still spoken today. We will look at several of these languages in terms of their linguistic structure as well as from social, historical, and political perspectives. No prior linguistic background is required and no previous knowledge of any Native American languages is presumed.
|
Spring. |
| LING2252 |
Intermediate Sanskrit II
Review of grammar and reading of selections from Sanskrit epic poetry and narrative prose.
|
Spring. |
| LING3302 |
Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology
This course is an introduction to both phonetics (the study of the physical properties of the sounds of human language) and phonology (the organization and patterning of those sounds). The first part of the course focuses on the main areas of phonetics: articulation, acoustics, and perception. Students acquire basic skills, such as production and perception of speech sounds, transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet, and instrumental analysis of speech. In the second part of the course students are introduced to key concepts in phonology, including rules, representations, and analysis of sound patterns. Throughout the course aspects of the sound systems of a wide range of world languages are studied.
Full details for LING 3302 - Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology |
Spring. |
| LING3314 |
Introduction to Historical Linguistics
Survey of the basic mechanisms of linguistic change, with examples from a variety of languages.
Full details for LING 3314 - Introduction to Historical Linguistics |
Spring. |
| LING3316 |
Old Norse II
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. Extensive reading of Old Norse texts, among them selections from some of the major Icelandic family sagas: Njals saga, Grettis saga, and Egils saga, as well as the whole Hrafnkels saga.
|
Spring. |
| LING3322 |
History of Romance Languages II
Further study of historical developments in the Romance languages will be interleaved with readings of significant Romance texts from the 9th to 13th centuries, both notarial and literary. Topics covered include: More on medieval diglossia and scribal practices. How medieval glosses bear on the study of early Romance. Losses and innovation in the Romance lexicon. Formation of three high-frequency irregular verbs: be, have, and go. Raising and yod effects in Spanish and Italian, yod metathesis in French. Verb morphology from Latin to Romance with emphasis on the synthetic past, the periphrastic past and future, newly created past participles, and the conditional mood. Students will become acquainted with the resources for studying medieval documents and produce an annotated translation of an excerpt from a pre-1400 Romance text as a final project.
Full details for LING 3322 - History of Romance Languages II |
Spring. |
| LING3390 |
Independent Study in Linguistics
Independent study of linguistics topics not covered in regular curriculum for undergrads.
Full details for LING 3390 - Independent Study in Linguistics |
Fall, Spring. |
| LING4424 |
Computational Linguistics
Computational models of natural languages. Topics include tree syntax and treebank databases; broad-coverage probabilistic grammars; finite state generative phonology; computational semantics; computational minimalist grammar; finite state optimality-theoretic phonology; Hidden Markov models of acoustic realization; text and speech corpora; lab methods in Unix/Linux environment.
|
Spring. |
| LING4425 |
Pragmatics
What is the relationship between what words mean and how they are used? What is part of the grammar and what is a result of general reasoning? Pragmatics is often thought of as the study of how meaning depends on the context of utterance. However, it can be difficult to draw a line between pragmatics and semantics. In this course, we will investigate various topics that walk this line, including varieties of linguistic inference (including entailment, presupposition, and implicature), anaphora, indexicals, and speech acts.
|
Spring. |
| LING4457 |
Homeric Philology
Language of the Homeric epics: dialect background, archaisms, modernizations. Notion of a Kunstsprache: its constitution, use, and internal consistency. Phonological and morphological aspects of epic compositional technique.
|
Spring. |
| LING4492 |
Honors Research Workshop II
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 submit drafts of the introduction, methodology, results, and conclusions. Students will comment on each others drafts. Students will also work on presentation skills.
|
Spring. |
| LING4494 |
Honors Thesis Research
Directed honors thesis research for students working on an honors thesis, taken with the student's honors thesis chair or other committee member.
|
Spring. |
| LING4712 |
Topics in the Philosophy of Language
An investigation of varying topics in the philosophy of language including reference, meaning, the relationship between language and thought, communication, modality, logic and pragmatics.
Full details for LING 4712 - Topics in the Philosophy of Language |
Spring. |
| LING6248 |
Native American Languages
This course explores the wide variety of languages indigenous to the Americas. There were thousands of languages spoken in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans and hundreds of these languages are still spoken today. We will look at several of these languages in terms of their linguistic structure as well as from social, historical, and political perspectives. No prior linguistic background is required and no previous knowledge of any Native American languages is presumed.
|
Spring. |
| LING6314 |
Introduction to Historical Linguistics
Survey of the basic mechanisms of linguistic change, with examples from a variety of languages.
Full details for LING 6314 - Introduction to Historical Linguistics |
Spring. |
| LING6402 |
Phonology II
A continuation of LING 6401 with a focus on developing research skills.
|
Spring. |
| LING6404 |
Syntax II
A continuation of LING 6403, focusing on syntactic dependencies, including the theory of control, an examination of locality constraints on movement, covert versus overt movement, and the syntax of quantification. The purpose of the course is to develop the background needed for independent syntactic research.
|
Spring. |
| LING6422 |
Semantics II
Uses the techniques introduced in Semantics I to analyze linguistic phenomena, including quantifier scope, ellipsis, and referential pronouns. Temporal and possible worlds semantics are introduced and used in the analysis of modality, tense, and belief sentences. The phenomena of presupposition, indefinite descriptions, and anaphora are analyzed in a dynamic compositional framework that formalizes the idea that sentence meaning effects a change in an information state.
|
Spring. |
| LING6425 |
Pragmatics
What is the relationship between what words mean and how they are used? What is part of the grammar and what is a result of general reasoning? Pragmatics is often thought of as the study of how meaning depends on the context of utterance. However, it can be difficult to draw a line between pragmatics and semantics. In this course, we will investigate various topics that walk this line, including varieties of linguistic inference including entailment, presupposition, and implicature), anaphora, indexicals, and speech acts.
|
Spring. |
| LING6457 |
Homeric Philology
Language of the Homeric epics: dialect background, archaisms, modernizations. Notion of a Kunstsprache: its constitution, use, and internal consistency. Phonological and morphological aspects of epic compositional technique.
|
Spring. |
| LING6600 |
Field Methods
Elicitation, recording, and analysis of data from a native speaker of an understudied non-Western language. Provides basic experience in linguistic fieldwork.
|
Spring. |
| LING6603 |
Research Workshop
Provides a forum for presentation and discussion of ongoing research, and development of professional skills. Participants must enroll in a concurrent independent study with a special committee member, or a relevant workshop.
|
Spring. |
| LING6604 |
Research Workshop
Provides a forum for presentation and discussion of ongoing research, and development of professional skills. Participants must enroll in a concurrent independent study with a special committee member, or a relevant workshop.
|
Spring. |
| LING6634 |
Topics in the Philosophy of Language
An investigation of varying topics in the philosophy of language including reference, meaning, the relationship between language and thought, communication, modality, logic and pragmatics.
Full details for LING 6634 - Topics in the Philosophy of Language |
Spring. |
| LING6635 |
Indo-European Workshop
An assortment of subjects intended for students with previous training in Indo-European linguistics: problems in the reconstruction of Proto Indo-European, topics in the historical grammars of the various IE languages, reading and historical linguistic analysis of texts, and grammatical sketches of "minor" IE languages.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| LING6692 |
Phonetic Data Analysis Workshop
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 |
Fall, Spring. |
| LING7702 |
Directed Research
An independent study for graduate students.
|
Spring. |
| LING7710 |
Computational Seminar
Addresses current theoretical and empirical issues in computational linguistics.
|
Spring. |
| LING7712 |
Syntax Seminar
Addresses current theoretical and empirical issues in syntax.
|
Spring. |
| LING7713 |
Phonetics Seminar
Addresses current theoretical and empirical issues in phonetics.
|
Spring. |