Linguistics

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 foundation course introduces the basic knowledge of modern linguistics and language teaching. Language teachers must have profound knowledge about the sounds, grammar, vocabulary and semantics of the target language as well as deep understanding about its use in different contexts. 

This course introduces theoretical and technical issues on how languages work, and how one can utilize it for oneself. It provides an overview of core concepts in linguistics relevant to language education, exploring issues related to one’s own language learning and bilingualism.

The course introduces students to the core concepts of applied linguistics - history, origin, and scope. It explores how linguistic knowledge can be used to understand and address real-world language and communication issues.  Students will examine language processing, language disorders, and multilingualism from cognitive, social, and educational perspectives. The course also focuses on identifying contemporary language-related social problems, analyzing their causes, and proposing interdisciplinary solutions.

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. 

Students research a self-chosen topic and develop an extended research essay under the direct tutelage of an appointed mentor. Students engage in conversation with teachers who are experts in the subject being studied. These tutorials allow students to develop their own ideas under the direct supervision of a tutor.

This course provides a study of the basic principles of language and models for the analysis of languages. It covers the conceptual and methodological instruments used to analyze the morphosyntactic, semantic, and discursive structures and functions of language.