Linguistics

Using contemporary texts, this course explores recent issues in philosophy of language. Topics include context and indexicality, indefinites and definites, quantifiers, modality and tense, or the relationships among singular propositions, singular thoughts, and singular terms. 

The course introduces students to the foundational concepts in the study of language from the perspective of cognitive science. It explores questions that are still a matter of debate in the field, critically evaluating both evidence and arguments. Students develop a deeper understanding of how language works, some of the principles governing the complex interactions between language and other cognitive dimensions (such as attention, perception, and thought), and a basic understanding of how language functions in the brain.

This course establishes the accessibility and practical usefulness of linguistics in a variety of fields. Formal instruction is integrated with hands-on activities and theoretical insights are systematically correlated with applied work. The course examines key linguistic concepts, grammatical categories, and methodological procedures.

This course offers an introduction of corpus linguistics for graduate students, including the necessary tools, techniques, and analysis methodologies for doing corpus-based studies and corpus annotation projects. Existing major corpora are scrutinized for a better understanding of their linguistic uses. The course enables students to make, annotate and search corpora, as well as to perform a quantitative analysis of some linguistic phenomenon. Students will also gain hands-on experience in these areas by working on a specific topic of their own interest. 

The six-week summer lab research program at National Taiwan University places students in various science, engineering and social science research labs and/or projects under the supervision of faculty. Students spend approximately 30 hours per week in lab activities.