Fall 2024
SPAN 508: Generative Syntax
Time: TR 9:05-10:20 a.m.
Instructor: Karen Miller
Description: This course offers foundations of generative syntax. It addresses the advantage of a scientific model to explain human knowledge of language that also makes predictions about its representation in the mind.
SPAN 509: Functional Syntax
Time: TR 3:05-4:20 p.m.
Instructor: Rena Torres Cacoullos
Description: This course covers foundations of functional syntax. It addresses the advantages of a scientific approach to explain human knowledge of language that makes predictions about its representation in the mind.
Spring 2024
SPAN 510: Spanish Descriptive Linguistics: Phonology
Time: TR 1:35-2:50 p.m.
Instructor: Matthew Carlson
SPAN 597: Language Acquisition and Variation
Time: TR 9:05-10:20 a.m.
Instructor: Karen Miller
Description: This course brings together research in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and first and second language acquisition in order to prepare students to investigate how learners acquire and process sociolinguistic variation. The course will cover various corpus and experimental studies on the acquisition of variation and review how these studies inform models of L1 and L2 acquisition.
Fall 2023
SPAN 507: Hispano-Romance Linguistics
Time: TR 12:05-1:20 p.m.
Instructor: Rena Torres Cacoullos
Description: History, development, and linguistic description of Old Spanish and related Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula.
Spring 2023
SPAN 509: Functional Syntax
Time: TR 3:05-4:20 p.m.
Instructor: Manuel Pulido
Course Description: This course covers foundations of functional syntax. It addresses the advantages of a scientific approach to explain human knowledge of language that makes predictions about its representation in the mind.
SPAN 519: Current Statistical Practice in Language Science
Time: TR 10:35-11:50 a.m.
Instructor: Matthew Carlson
Description: Our primary goal in this course is to explore how to analyze and interpret quantitative data in language science. Part of this goal will be to gain familiarity and proficiency with a range of quantitative techniques common in language science. Reflecting trends in the field, linear and logistic mixed effects regression will be a major focus in addition to more well-known (e.g. ANOVA, multiple regression, chi-square) techniques. We will also spend some time exploring other methods such as multidimensional scaling, generalized additive modeling, and conditional inference trees, as well as more specialized techniques (e.g. drift-diffusion modeling). A more important goal is to learn to think critically about quantitative data and how we can learn from it. This includes a critical view of quantitative research in general, questions of measurement, the many decisions involved in analytic strategy, model structure and interpretation, and the ability to extend students’ knowledge to new techniques independently.
Fall 2022
LING 597: Linguistics and Language Science
Time: TR 12:05-1:20 p.m.
Instructor: John Lipski
Course Description: The goal of this course is to familiarize students interested in linguistic diversity and human-computer interaction with fundamental theories and approaches in linguistics and language science. Primarily designed for students in the NSF NRT LINDIV program, this course presents key topics in linguistics, with emphasis on research techniques and interfaces with other scientific disciplines (e.g. engineering, information technology, health sciences). The primary focus is on linguistic diversity across the life span, including within-language regional and social variation, bilingualism, and language disorders. The presentations target practical applications such as automatic speech recognition, speech synthesis, voice identification, corpus analysis, and machine translation.
Representative topics:
- PHONETICS. Acoustic properties of speech. Visualization, manipulation, and analysis with PRAAT software. Applications for speech synthesis.
- PHONOLOGY. Sound systems; regional and social variation of phonological patterns. Laboratory phonology paradigms.
- SYNTAX. Deep and superficial structures. Parsing; variation and ambiguity. Experimental investigation of well-formedness.
- LEXICON AND SEMANTICS. Models of lexical storage. Spreading activation. Priming and lexical decision.
- LANGUAGE VARIATION. Geographical and social variation; qualitative and quantitative modeling. Perceptual dialectology vs. dialect mapping. Available resources for U. S. English.
- MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE. Parallel activation. Bilingualism in the brain. Bilingualism and cognition. Code-switching in production and processing.
SPAN 597: Theorizing Multilingualism
Time: TR 10:35-11:50 a.m.
Instructor: Matt Carlson
Course Description: There is now widespread recognition that most humans speak more than one language. This has contributed to increasing criticism of monolingual bias in linguistic theorizing and to the acknowledgment that a full understanding of the human language capacity must include multilingualism. In this course we will survey what has become a wide array of theoretical approaches to multilingualism, seeking to identify the major questions to be answered, and asking what kinds of data can help us answer them. In course projects, we will seek to advance our theoretical understanding through both exploratory data analysis and hypothesis testing.
Spring 2022
SPAN 597 – Usage-based approaches to Second Language Acquisition
Time: TR 1:35-2:50 p.m.
Instructor: Manuel Pulido
Course Description: Usage-based approaches view linguistic knowledge as emerging from input experience and general cognitive mechanisms. This course explores second language learning and generalization, with a particular emphasis on the notion of constructions. By examining data from experimental methods and corpus linguistics, we will explore the question of how the distributional patterns of linguistic input affect the learnability of a second language. In problem sets, students will be introduced to essential skills for the computational analysis of text corpora (tagging; automatized extraction of n-grams, collocations, collostructions, etc.). Students will also complete an original project, analyzing the learnability of L2 constructions based on the quantitative analysis of linguistic data.
SPAN 597- Code-switching: a usage-based perspective
Time: TR 10:35-11:50 a.m.
Instructor: Rena Torres Cacoullos
Course Description: This seminar will provide an examination of codeswitching (CS), drawing on corpus- and lab-based methods. We will attend to bilinguals’ linguistic experience and community norms as impacting the cognitive representation of language and thus linguistic structures. We will address (1) linguistic concerns with constraints on CS by asking: Is CS favored at particular syntactic and prosodic junctures of the two languages? and (2) psycholinguistic concerns with the facilitation of CS by asking: Is CS predicted by “triggering” (either situational, e.g., by the interlocutor, or linguistic, e.g. by cognates)? Rather than assume that bilingual patterns need be derivable from syntactic principles for monolingual grammar, our goal will be to identify bilingual CS strategies–quantitative preferences to switch at particular sites and structural adjustments for switching at dispreferred sites. Students will present and evaluate published articles; learn to extract and code CS data; and conduct a pilot study toward an original research proposal.
Fall 2021
LING 520 – Seminar in Psycholinguistics
Time: TR 9:05-10:20
Instructor: Giuli Dussias
Course Description: The exponential growth of the use of experimental methods in linguistic research has extended our ability to examine the cognitive processes underlying human language, thus making psycholinguistics an increasingly important branch of linguistics. In this seminar we will examine psycholinguistics through the lens of bilingualism. Bilingualism is of interest for a number of reasons. First, despite the prevalence of monolinguals in the United States, most people of the world are bilingual. To have a genuinely universal account of human cognition will therefore require a detailed understanding of the relations between language and thought in individuals who speak and understand more than one language. It will be essential that research on basic cognitive functions in bilinguals examine both the course and the consequence of second language acquisition.
The primary goal of this course will be to introduce the core themes of psycholinguistics, using multilingual speakers as the case study. We will begin with issues concerning the acquisition of core linguistic levels, continue with lexical (e.g. how do multilingual speakers process cognates [piano] and false cognates [fin]?) and sentence processing (e.g. How do the two languages influence each other in predictive processing or when resolving syntactic ambiguity?), and finish with the cognitive neural consequences of bilingualism on general cognition, examining both production and comprehension throughout. A secondary goal for the course, is to help students become familiar with current experimental methods used in psycholinguistic and increasingly in traditional linguistic research, e.g. self-paced reading tasks, syntactic priming, eye-tracking methodologies, EEG recordings, and fMRI.
SPAN 597 – Language Acquisition and Variation
Time: TR 12:05-1:20
Instructor: Karen Miller
Course Description: This course brings together research in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and first and second language acquisition in order to prepare students to investigate how learners acquire and process sociolinguistic variation. The course will cover various corpus and experimental studies on the acquisition of variation and review how these studies inform models of L1 and L2 acquisition.
Spring 2021
SPAN 509 – Functional Syntax
Time: TR 1:35-2:50 p.m.
Instructor: Rena Torres Cacoullos
Course Description: In a usage-based perspective, grammatical structures are shaped by their frequency and discourse contexts, as domain-general cognitive processes are at work. In this course, the data to be accounted for are usage frequencies and the factors conditioning speakers’ choices between forms with a shared grammatical function. Our objectives are for students (1) to sample approaches in this area–grammaticalization, typology, discourse-based syntax, construction grammar–and (2) to carry out an original quantitative syntactic analysis, developing corresponding argumentation. The report on this analysis should result minimally in submission of a conference abstract.
SPAN 519 – Current statistical practice in language science
Time: TR 10:35-11:50 a.m.
Instructor: Matthew Carlson
Course Description: This course is designed to help students become active participants in the use and development of quantitative data analysis in the language science community. Students will gain familiarity with basic statistical concepts and techniques as well as more advanced techniques that are commonly used in our field. More importantly, students will consider the motivations behind researchers’ choices in how to analyze their data, by reading contributions to the growing literature on quantitative methodology in language science, critiquing published work, and conducting their own analyses of published and unpublished data. The goal is to equip students with the tools to both begin analyzing their own data, and to expand their knowledge by critically examining current practice, and assessing new developments in our field.
SPAN 597 – Trends and topics in second language acquisition
Time: TR 9:05-10:20 a.m.
Instructor: Manuel Pulido
Course Description: The course provides an overview of topics and theories in second language acquisition (SLA), with a focus on the linguistic and cognitive aspects of learning a language during adulthood. The course will explore in depth the specificities of adult language learning (as opposed to L1 acquisition) through topics that include age effects, input processing, salience and attention, implicit/explicit learning, error prediction and feedback, social interaction, desirable difficulties, and individual-based differences. While most readings will be provided, students will be responsible for exploring a linguistic topic of their interest and for contributing additional papers. Students will be encouraged to build on previous and/or current interests and to pursue them within approaches to second language acquisition.
Fall 2020
GER/LING 597 – Morphology: structure, acquisition, & attrition
Time: TR 9:05-10:20
Instructor: Mike Putnam
Course Description: Although the term and concept word is omnipresent is foreign language instruction and linguistic research, its attributes and functions are poorly understood. In this course we attempt to define the concept of wordhood through the formal study of its content, i.e., morphology. Developing a derivational approach, we will gain a better understanding of the structural properties of words and their relationship with other aspects of grammar (i.e., phonology, semantics, & syntax). Our discussion of the structural properties of words will aid us in enhancing our understanding of the acquisition (in both L1 and L2 contexts) and attrition of morphology.
LING 504 – Phonology
Time: TR 12:05-1:20
Instructor: John Lipski
Course Description: Phonology is concerned with understanding sound patterns in language. This course introduces current theories of the basic organizational units of phonology: features, segments, autosegments, suprasegmentals, syllables, and words. Special emphasis will be placed on the role of the syllable, feature geometry, and general non‑linear approaches to phonology. Constraint-based phonology/optimality theory will be introduced as used in contemporary research paradigms. We will begin by studying the grounding of phonology in phonetics, including the fundamentals of acoustic, articulatory, and auditory phonetics. Students will analyze data in formal problem sets and we will examine particular problems through reading various journal articles treating the same topic from different experimental and theoretical approaches.
SPAN 508/LING 500 – Generative syntax
Time: TR 1:35-2:50
Instructor: Karen Miller
Course Description: This course serves as an overview of principle elements involved in the formal analysis of syntactic structure in natural language. Using a wide array of cross-linguistic data, we will explore which elements of syntactic structure are essential building blocks in the human language. The theoretical approach adopted in this course combines both formal and functional factors, and will function as an essential grounding for the combination of theoretical and experimental research moving forward.