Linguistics

Animals (and even insects) can communicate with each other, but man's way of communication is fundamentally different in that it is greatly facilitated by language, the structure of which seems species-specific. This course concentrates on this part of human language with special reference to its syntax, a set of rules that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. This course thus aims to discover principles that govern this essential aspect of human language and tries to tackle issues such as how child language acquisition takes place and how surface differences among languages may be explained by the notion of parameter.

This course explains that language has a role other than communication. It aims to understand that human language has both diversity and universality. The course discovers areas related to linguistics using comprehensible examples.

This class focuses on helping one understand PHONETICS and PHONOLOGY as they apply to language learning and teaching. Phonetics and phonology, or the study of human speech sounds and sound systems, are the foundation of all study of language. Because this class is taught in English, it starts with English pronunciation then it will contrast this with Japanese and other languages. Students will have the opportunity to explore the common pronunciation difficulties that speakers of particular languages (such as Chinese, French, German, Korean, Thai, and any language of interest) can have when speaking English or Japanese.

Throughout the world, the number of French speakers continues to increase, especially in Africa. In this course, we will try to refine our knowledge and our perception of the distribution of the French language. We will also try to gain an impression of the new varieties of French that have developed recently.

This course examines the nature of human language and its main characteristics, as well as the different theoretical-analytical dimensions involved in the study of language. It analyzes fundamental problems of linguistics, in particular, those related to language as a cultural, social, and cognitive phenomenon.

This course explores the truthfulness of AI, as a non-reliable source of information, from a linguistic angle. On the premise that AI-tools are increasingly used to provide “information” in professional and private settings, but in reality are producing ‘hallucinations’, false information, the course compares the logic and architecture behind large language models (LLM) used in AI-tools with the logic and architecture behind human cognition (including the capacity for language). It also delves into several aspects of human language that contribute to our inclination to take AI-generated output at face value.

This course provides a comprehensive understanding of Japanese linguistics. Starting with the position of Japanese linguistics within linguistics, the course introduces knowledge from a variety of fields, from phonetics and phonology to sociolinguistics, and develops the ability to analyze Japanese from a linguistic perspective.