Linguistics

This course introduces the lexicographical approach implemented in language dictionaries as well as different types of relation and construction of meaning in lexicon. The course covers synonyms, homonyms, antonyms, hyponymy, hyperonymy, derivatives and compounds, and the phenomena of multiple meanings. It provides an opportunity to practice categorizing and organizing the uses of words in the form of mock dictionary entries.

This course analyzes language from diverse perspectives (biological, cognitive, social, and cultural) and discusses its fundamental questions, such as its evolution, variation, acquisition, and relationship with other semiotic systems. 

This course provides an introduction to the various fields within English linguistics, including theoretical, interdisciplinary, and applied branches, and helps students understand what types of linguistic phenomena are of interest and how such phenomena are observed and analyzed in each of the fields. Topics include phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax/grammar, semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, neurolinguistics, first/second language acquisition, dialectology/sociolinguistics, cultural linguistics, corpus linguistics, natural language processing/artificial intelligence, and other related topics. 

In recent years, there has been growing interest in sign language along with increasing social awareness that sign language is a real language worthy of systematic study. This course is a general education survey course introduces students to the many different social and communicative aspects of signing found around the world in deaf and non-deaf communities. Even hearing communities such as aboriginal and monastic ones have found the need to communicate visually when, for whatever reason, speech cannot be used.

By the end of this course, students are expected to: Learning Goals:
1) Have acquired insight into a different visual world of communication.

2) Have increased awareness of changes in attitudes regarding disability, identity, and culture.

3) Have a better understanding of educational and social welfare practices affecting the deaf in Japan and around the world.

This course deals with syntactic change in the history of English (in comparison, in particular, with German and French). Phenomena to be discussed will include the loss of inflectional morphology, the loss of free word order, the change from OV to VO word order, the loss of verb movement and the development of do-support, and the shift from a general verb-second language to a residual verb-second language.

This course offers an introduction to applied linguistics including its origin, history, and scope. Topics include: language processing; language disorders; multilingualism, language planning, and education.

The course focuses on the constituents of the simple sentence and their categorization (the different classes of words), as well as on the morphosyntactic relations within the simple sentence. The nominal group and its constituents are studied more particularly. It is about learning to identify words from their characteristics in terms of their form (morphology), their meaning (semantics), and their combinatorial possibility (distribution).

This course covers basic concepts in theoretical linguistics while it focuses on how different kinds of meaning are conveyed as well as how they interact and/or are controlled by other factors, drawing examples mainly from English and Japanese. The course covres basic concepts such as word, phrase, sentence; natural language and logical language meanings; logical symbols and formula; valence and thematic roles; lexical (or sense) reactions; contextual information; implicature, presupposition, speech act theories and illocutionary acts; politeness, and discourse.