Linguistics

This course examines the psycholinguistic processes that underlie the acquisition, understanding and production of speech as well as the organization of these processes in the brain. It discusses the traditional debates related to the genesis of language, its evolution and its acquisition. The course also reviews known speech processing models in the area of psycholinguistic studies that describe the processes of understanding and production of both oral and written discourse.

This course focuses on the study of language in its social context, a branch of Linguistics that is referred to as sociolinguistics. The course includes topics such as: introduction (basic concepts and issues in sociolinguistics); regional variation; social variation; language change, language and social media; multilingualism; language and interaction; gender and language; language contact; pidgins, creoles and new Englishes; language planning and policy; language and education; the sociolinguistics of sign language. DP requirements: None. Assessment: Continuous assessment (essays, projects, tests, etc.) counts 100%.

At the end of the course, the student has acquired knowledge of the romance languages and literatures of the Middle Ages and their formation, with particular regard to French and Occitan. The student acquires the skills for adopting the instruments of textual criticism, in order to be aware of the transformations of texts and languages through the centuries. The course content is divided into 3 parts:

I. Linguistics: From Latin to the Romance languages (phonetics, morphosyntax, lexicon); The Romance languages across space and time; Characteristics of Gallo-Romance, with particular reference to Old French and Old Occitan.

II. Textual Criticism: The concept of textual tradition; The manuscript; Elements of textual editing.

III. Literary History: Origins of Romance literatures; Comparative history of the literatures of langue d’oc and langue d’oïl: genres and texts (hagiography, epic, lyric, romance, tale, allegorical-didactic literature); Elements of metrics.

This course explores language as a social and cultural practice. It examines how linguistic variation is influenced by cultural diversity, linguistic communities, and social stratification. This course also offers a study of the relationship between linguistic competence and social competence as well as how discourse contributes to the social construction of meaning within different communities. It assesses the role of language policies in actual language use and in the social perception of languages. 

This course explores the morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics of the grammatical category of gender. It examines what kids of gender systems exist, how gender is morphologically manifested on different grammatical categories, what the relation between gender and agreement is, how gender is interpreted and how this all varies across different languages. The class compares English with languages with different gender systems, such as German, Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian, or those of Bantu languages, in order to gain a comprehensive overview of its crosslinguistic variation.

This course introduces experimental approaches to the study of language for students with a background in introductory linguistics. Students learn how linguistic hypotheses can be tested using behavioral methods such as acceptability judgments and reading-time measures. Through hands-on activities and a small-scale research project, they gain experience in designing experiments, analyzing data, and interpreting results in relation to current theoretical issues.

Required Prerequisites: Introduction to Linguistics I or II, or instructor consent.

This course introduces students to the mechanisms of the production of speech sounds, e.g. vowels and consonants, their description, classification and transcription. The course explores how speech sounds are organized across languages. Students practice how to establish speech sounds in a language (or phonemes) by using minimal pairs and complementary distribution. They learn basic phonological processes which occur in language.

This course offers an overview of some major concepts concerning translation as a social practice that has a significant impact on our daily lives and cultures. It provides opportunities to increase awareness through practical exercises in translation. It addresses the questions: What role do translators and translations play as agents of social change? Does it matter who translates whom? How do translation and social media interact in the fraught contemporary media landscape? 

This course explores the relationship between language, society, and culture from a sociolinguistic and intercultural perspective. It identifies how social, historical, and cultural factors influence language use and variation, as well as the processes of language contact. This course addresses the impact of intercultural communication on identity, social interaction, and the construction of meanings. It begins with a brief history and the fundamental concepts of sociolinguistics and then moves to the types of variation in sociolinguistics. Next, it concentrates on the relationship between language and attitude and then that of language and culture. This course examines culture and intercultural communication and finishes by discussing the future of English as a global language.  

This course teaches fundamental aspects of vocabulary and meaning in modern Japanese.