LINGUIST290STA-SEC01 Language & Advertisement Fall 2023

This course investigates the language used in advertisements. Advertisements are designed to persuade us to do things. Our focus will be on how advertisers use language to convey meanings, how they appeal to our emotions and elicit humor. We will examine concrete examples and use basic concepts from linguistic theory to understand the properties of persuasive language and the kinds of meanings that are at play.

LINGUIST101-SEC01 People & Their Language Fall 2023

Language is a uniquely human instinct. It is also our most important cultural artifact. This course examines language as an instinct and as a social construct that dynamically shapes and is shaped by history, class, status, ethnicity, gender, and institutions like the media and the law. (Gen.Ed. DU, SB)

LINGUIST201-SEC04 HowLanguageWorks:IntroLingThry Fall 2023

Introduction to the basic methodology and results of modern linguistics. Focus on developing, evaluating, and improving hypotheses concerning the structure of the language user's unconscious linguistic knowledge. Investigation of sentence structure (syntax), sound structure (phonology), word structure (morphology), and meaning (semantics). (Gen.Ed. R2)

LINGUIST201-SEC01 HowLanguageWorks:IntroLingThry Fall 2023

Introduction to the basic methodology and results of modern linguistics. Focus on developing, evaluating, and improving hypotheses concerning the structure of the language user's unconscious linguistic knowledge. Investigation of sentence structure (syntax), sound structure (phonology), word structure (morphology), and meaning (semantics). (Gen.Ed. R2)

LINGUIST305-SEC01 S-Writing for Linguistics Fall 2023

This course fills the JYW requirement.

LINGUIST390B-SEC01 French Linguistics Fall 2023

We will review main domain of linguistics in connection with French; syntax, phonology, pragmatics, semantics. Main texts from the francophone linguistics literature. Knowledge of French a plus, not necessary.

Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language (Linguistics 748)

The goals of this course are threefold. First, this course will provide students with (further) experience in the general task of investigating a language through one-on-one interviews with its speakers (i.e., ‘fieldwork’). Secondly, this course will allow students to gain extensive scholarly knowledge of an unfamiliar and (relatively) under-documented language. Thirdly, this course will provide introduction to and discussion of some more general topics and issues in the practice of linguistic fieldwork, such as (i) workflow and best practices, (ii) ethics, (iii) becoming involved with a community, and (iv) decolonialization and the historical legacy of the field.

Students will elicit, record and transcribe language data from the speaker of an unfamiliar, non-Indo-European language (Kazakh; Turkic), and will develop original, theoretically informed analyses of those data. Moreover, student work will highlight the ways in which the structure of the language informs current debates within linguistic theory.

The class as a whole will also work towards the creation of a publicly available language archive housing (i) the recordings collected during the semester and their transcriptions, (ii) an English-Kazakh dictionary, and (iii) the students’ final course projects.

Semantics & Generative Grammar (Linguistics 610)

Comprehensive survey of semantic problems in transformational-generative linguistics.

LINGUIST601-SEC01 Intr-Trnsftl Grammar Fall 2023

Intensive introduction to the concepts of transformational grammar. Survey in depth of problems and methods of research, with emphasis on different types of linguistic evidence and argument.