Fall 2023

LING 1000: Language in U.S. Society
Instructor: Natalie Grothues

Humans use language as part of almost everything we do in social life. Whether it’s an everyday activity such as chit-chatting with a friend or family member over dinner, or something as globally significant as a presidential election or UN Summit, language provides us with many of the tools we use to make it happen. And yet, while we live our lives through language (or perhaps because of that fact), most of us rarely take the time to critically examine its influence on us, nor our influence on it. This course provides an occasion for this sort of critical thinking by offering an introduction to language in U.S. society. As such, our aims are as much sociological as they are linguistic. 
We begin with some foundational topics, including language acquisition, regional and dialectal variation, register and style (including shifting between them), prescriptivism and descriptivism, and some pervasive ideologies about the nature of language and how language ‘should’ be. We then explore the relationship between language and some specific social phenomena and institutions, taking as cases-in-point race/ethnicity, Deaf/Hearing communication, criminal justice systems, politics, and various forms of media. Next, we discuss language in everyday interaction—specifically how, in and through our use of language, we consistently go about categorizing, labeling, and evaluating the world, and how we use language in our everyday lives to construct our identities and build relationships. We then conclude by exploring a few phenomena in which we see some interesting similarities as we compare language use in the U.S. with language use across the globe. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own personal experiences with regard to each of these topics as we proceed through the course. 
This course can be applied toward fulfillment of either the Arts & Sciences Distribution Requirement (for Social Science), or the Arts & Sciences Diversity Requirement (for U.S. Perspective).

Instructor: Kate Arnold-Murray (CE)

Humans use language as part of almost everything we do in social life. Whether it’s an everyday activity such as chit-chatting with a friend or family member over dinner, or something as globally significant as a presidential election or UN Summit, language provides us with many of the tools we use to make it happen. And yet, while we live our lives through language (or perhaps because of that fact), most of us rarely take the time to critically examine its influence on us, nor our influence on it. This course provides an occasion for this sort of critical thinking by offering an introduction to language in U.S. society. As such, our aims are as much sociological as they are linguistic.
We begin with some foundational topics, including language acquisition, regional and dialectal variation, register and style (including shifting between them), prescriptivism and descriptivism, and some pervasive ideologies about the nature of language and how language ‘should’ be. We then explore the relationship between language and some specific social phenomena and institutions, taking as cases-in-point race/ethnicity, Deaf/Hearing communication, criminal justice systems, politics, and various forms of media. Next, we discuss language in everyday interaction—specifically how, in and through our use of language, we consistently go about categorizing, labeling, and evaluating the world, and how we use language in our everyday lives to construct our identities and build relationships. We then conclude by exploring a few phenomena in which we see some interesting similarities as we compare language use in the U.S. with language use across the globe. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own personal experiences with regard to each of these topics as we proceed through the course.
This course can be applied toward fulfillment of either the Arts & Sciences Distribution Requirement (for Social Science), or the Arts & Sciences Diversity Requirement (for U.S. Perspective).

This class will be taught online and delivered asynchronously which means there are not scheduled days and times. Students can complete the coursework throughout the week when it is convenient for them.

LING 1020: Languages of the World
Instructor: Evan Cole-Harris

This course offers a general introduction to the world's languages. It covers topics such as the origins of language, the origins of individual languages and language families, and the relationships between the world's languages (did you know that English is related to Hindi?). It provides a brief introduction to the major languages and language groups of the world, and the interesting features of these languages, many of which are radically different from English. It also discusses the processes of historical change in languages, the origins and development of writing systems, and the ways that certain languages have spread around the world and the reasons why, as well as the fact that many smaller languages are now endangered. Finally, we'll also look some at artificial languages (Klingon, Esperanto, Lord of the Rings), and the future of the world's languages.

Instructor: Jared Desjardins (CE)

There are more than 7000 languages spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world’s languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a great part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization.

This class will be taught online and delivered asynchronously which means there are not scheduled days and times. Students can complete the coursework throughout the week when it is convenient for them.

LING 1200: Programming for Linguists
Instructor: Daniel Chen

This class presents techniques for computer programming in high level programming languages such as Python to address a range of problems with a specific focus on language processing and linguistics. The class is suitable for students with little to no prior experience in computing or programming.

This course covers the fundamentals of programming using the programming language Python. After the course, students should be familiar with variables, data types, control structures, reading and writing files, functions, and basic data structures. The focus is on program development for natural language processing and computational linguistics. Students will become familiar with programming and using third-party libraries to accomplish fundamental tasks in computing.

LING 1900: Literacy Practicum
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

This community-based learning course of one-credit hour is open to all students who are currently taking a linguistics course or who have taken a linguistics course in the past.  The Literacy Practicum program pairs CU Boulder undergraduate student volunteers as “Buff Buddies” with language and literacy learners of all ages in the Boulder community.  Volunteers may select which program they want to work with, such as the Boulder Library Reading Buddies program (K-5), the Boulder County "I Have a Dream” Foundation (1-12; new!), or the CU Boulder SWAP program (CU Boulder adult employees whose main language is not English). The time investment is approximately 1-2 hours per week for 12 weeks. Volunteers are guided by faculty and graduate-student program directors and are required to write 3 informal blog posts about their experiences over the course of the semester.  Sign up for this pass/fail course and make a difference in the Boulder community!

LING 2000: Introduction to Linguistics
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. In this course you will learn about structures of human language(s) and their functions. The central question in linguistics is “how does language work,” in all of its variation and complexity? You will learn what one needs to “know” to speak a language, and how language is used in social contexts. You will learn that all languages vary and change - languages are not static, and linguistic varieties differ from each other in a myriad of ways. However, there are systematic methods that we can use to analyze linguistic data in every language and linguistic variety. All languages rely on the human body and cognitive system’s capacity to make and perceive sounds or signs, the study of phonetics. All languages have a specific inventory of sounds or signs, and the study of how they systematically behave is called phonology. All languages have words, and the study of their internal structure in each language is called morphology. All languages have particular rules and patterns for how words combine, which is the study of syntax. Crucially, the function of all languages is to communicate meaning. The study of meaning conventionally encoded in lexical items is called semantics, and the study of inferential meaning in context is called pragmatics. In addition, language is always used within a dynamic sociocultural context, and thus language use informs identity construction and social meaning, the study of sociocultural linguistics. At the end of the semester you should be able to: use the basic tools of linguistic analysis to understand the fundamental properties of language(s), reason about the issues involved in the social use of language, draw generalizations based on accurate and concise observations about linguistic data, and provide explanations for observed linguistic patterns.

LING 2400: Language, Gender, and Sexuality
Instructor: Kira Hall

This course explores how language is used as a resource for the production of gender and sexuality across cultures, with a special focus on language practices in today’s college-aged generation. We will consider how ideas about gender and sexuality are perpetuated through language; how speakers use language to affirm or challenge these ideas; and how language is involved in the gendered construction of social identities, communities, and political positions. We will also be interested in the question of whether technology is facilitating a new wave of gender-based activism in today’s postmillennial generation, a phenomenon (controversially) discussed by a growing number of researchers as “fourth wave feminism.” Sample topics for discussion include: gender and sexual categories in cross-cultural perspective; language and identity; gendered speaking styles in face-to-face conversation and online; the performativity of sex and gender; language and masculinity; the language of dating and romance; language and sexual violence; popular representations of gender and sexuality in the media; and finally, new forms of gender and sexual expression in a globalizing world.
Our discussion includes foundational and contemporary perspectives on language, gender, and sexuality as voiced in anthropology, linguistics, sociology, philosophy, communication, and gender studies. Throughout the course, we will attempt to link developments in the study of language and gender with theoretical perspectives and trends in feminist and sociocultural theory. In addition to research in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, we will read and become acquainted with the insights of a number of relevant and important philosophers and social theorists, among them J. L. Austin, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault. Students need not have any previous linguistic training or experience with gender studies or anthropology to enroll in the course, although students with some background in these areas will certainly gain additional benefits.

Instructor: Ayden Parish (CE)

This course explores how language is used as a resource for the production of gender and sexuality across cultures. We will consider how ideas about gender and sexuality are perpetuated through language; how speakers use language to affirm or challenge these ideas; and how language is involved in the gendered construction of social identities, communities, and political positions. We will also be interested in the language practices of today’s college-aged generation, such as whether technology is facilitating a new wave of gender-based activism.

Our discussion includes foundational and contemporary perspectives of language, gender, and sexuality as found in anthropology, linguistics, sociology, philosophy, communication, and gender studies. Furthermore, we will read and become acquainted with the insights of a number of important and social theorists, among them J. L. Austin, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault.

This class will be taught online and delivered asynchronously which means there are not scheduled days and times. Students can complete the coursework throughout the week when it is convenient for them.

LING 3005: Cognitive Science
Instructor: R. Carston

Introduces cognitive science, drawing from psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and linguistics. Studies the linguistic relativity hypothesis, consciousness, categorization, linguistic rules, the mind-body problem, nature versus nurture, conceptual structure and metaphor, logic/problem solving and judgment. Emphasizes the nature, implications and limitations of the computational model of mind. Recommended prerequisites: two of the following CSCI 1300 or LING 2000 or PHIL 2440 or PSYC 2145. Same as CSCI 3702 and PHIL 3310 and PSYC 3005 and SLHS 3003 and CSPB 3702.

LING 3100: Language Sound Structures
Instructor: J Calder

This course is about sounds in language, introducing the areas of linguistic study called phonetics and phonology. We will consider such fundamental questions as:

What are the sounds that people use in languages?
How do we produce those sounds?
What are the physical properties of those sounds?
How are these sounds used in human languages?

Along the way, we will acquire practical skills in perceiving and transcribing speech sounds, and we will learn some basic analytical techniques that enable us to address these (and other) questions.

LING 3220: AMERICAN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES
Instructor: Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo

This course examines various linguistic characteristics of Native American Languages as well as their social and cultural contexts. Two-three weeks of the course involve looking at one Native American language in detail from a linguistic standpoint – Dixhsa (a variety of Zapotec language spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico). The course broadens its focus to examine various other Native American languages, including topics such as place names, personal names, traditional oral narratives, ritual and oratory, language and worldview, and language endangerment and revitalization. Each student will choose one native American language as a personal focus for the semester, to supplement the in-class coverage.

LING 3430: Semantics
Instructor: Orin Hargraves

In this course we will explore how we use language to convey meaning. This enterprise raises a number of interesting questions: What are the kinds of meanings conveyed by the lexical and grammatical devices available in a language? Do languages differ in how they convey meaning? How much does context contribute to our understanding of meaning? What methods can we use to study meaning? We will investigate these and a range of other issues in semantics and pragmatics, focusing on both data and theory.

LING 3800/5800: The Endangered Language Technology Life Cycle

Instructor: Alexis Palmer

The main goal of this course is to give students practical, hands-on experience with the language technology life cycle for low-resource languages - in other words, what kinds of work needs to be done to build language technology from scratch, for a new language? The course is divided into two main units: a) Creating language data that is machine-readable, and b) Building language processing tools from existing language data. Some topics to be covered include data recording and transcription, data annotation and analysis, data search, using existing natural language processing tools, and building new applications. At every point along the way, we will carefully consider social and ethical factors related to working with and for language communities. This course is designed to be suitable for students with and without previous experience in programming and computational linguistics. The course will be focused on practical skills - we're going to build things! - and on understanding the technological and social landscape related to language processing tools for endangered languages. Please email me if you have any questions!

LING 4200/5200: Computational Corpus Linguistics
Instructor: Susan Brown

This course explores the use of corpora for natural language processing and for empirical linguistic analysis in a wide range of linguistic subfields. Topics include methods of corpus analysis, corpus design and annotation, corpus-based search tools, UNIX/LINUX tools for language analysis, language analysis using the Python programming language and the Natural Language Tool Kit. Recommended prerequisites are LING 1200, CSCI 1200 or CSCI 1300.

LING 4420: Morphology & Syntax
Instructor: Andy Cowell

This course provides a general introduction to the linguistic subfields of morphology and syntax. Our general focus is thus on the principles of word formation (morphology) and the structures used to construct larger utterances (syntax). Over the semester we will develop skills for analyzing and describing the morphological and syntactic characteristics of grammar and will explore how these phenomena vary in the world’s languages.

LING 4200/5200: Computational Corpus Linguistics
Instructor: Susan Brown

This course explores the use of corpora for natural language processing and for empirical linguistic analysis in a wide range of linguistic subfields. Topics include methods of corpus analysis, corpus design and annotation, corpus-based search tools, UNIX/LINUX tools for language analysis, language analysis using the Python programming language and the Natural Language Tool Kit. Recommended prerequisites are LING 1200, CSCI 1200 or CSCI 1300.

LING 4560: Language Development
Instructor: J. Damico

Covers the development of language in childhood and into adult life, emphasizing the role of environment and biological endowment in learning to communicate with words, sentences, and narratives. Same as SLHS 4560 and PSYC 4560.

LING 4620/5620: Teaching Second Language Oral Skills
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

This course explores pedagogical approaches for developing second language oral skills in English. We consider the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching the macroskills - listening and speaking - as well as related microskills, such as pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Pedagogical concepts are situated against the backdrop of various teaching contexts for learners with a range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Praxis occurs through lesson development and analysis and interactions with language learners in the community. The culminating project of the course is the design of open acceses curricular units that incorporate social justice themes into lessons that target second language oral skills.

LING 4630/5630: TESOL and Second Language Acquisition: Principles and Practices
Instructors: Raichle Farrelly

This course is an introduction to the Principles and Practices of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) field. The course provides students who are prospective, new, and/or experienced teachers of additional languages with a current overview of the field of TESOL and opportunities to build and expand pedagogical knowledge of strategies for language teaching and learning. While the course is aimed primarily at the teaching and learning of English, the course is also generally applicable to the teaching and learning of any additional languages. We will read about, observe, and analyze methods and materials for teaching vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, pronunciation and writing. During this course, you will engage in the learning process as we apply skills and approaches from the course to the teaching and learning of non-English languages. Assuming the role of a beginning language learner will foster theory-practice connections, provide experience with home language use for language learning, and raise awareness about the role of home languages in learners' lives and communities. Languages other than English will be used for modeling and demonstration purposes. We will explore methods and materials for language teaching principles, discuss educational trends, and reflect on global and local contexts for English language teaching.

LING 5030: Linguistic Phonetics
Instructor: Rebecca Scarborough

This course will give a practical and theoretical introduction to articulatory, acoustic, and auditory phonetics. We will be considering fundamental questions like: How do we produce speech? How do we perceive speech? What are the physical properties of the speech sounds we produce and perceive? How does the nature of these processes influence the sound patterns of languages?
Along the way you will gain lots of practical skills as well. You will (i) Acquire skills to transcribe spoken language data in any language & interpret the transcriptions of others; (ii) Learn to generate and interpret acoustic analyses, including waveforms and spectrograms, and collect acoustic measurements from them; (iii) Learn to design and implement controlled phonetic experiments for linguistic hypothesis testing; (iv) Recognize phonetic variation in spoken language (contextual, dialectal, stylistic, idiosyncratic); (v) Understand basic principles of articulation and how they yield specific acoustic consequences.

LING 5420: Morphology and Syntax
Instructor: Hannah Haynie

This course provides a general introduction to the principles of word formation (morphology) and sentence structure (syntax). We will investigate many word formation processes and syntactic structures found across the world’s languages, examining data from a diverse range of grammars along the way. This course will also explore the variation that exists in morphosyntax, investigating how languages use morphology and syntax differently and what sort of typological patterns we find as a result. Along the way we will build skills for analyzing word structure (including morphophonological processes and morphosyntactic patterns) and for understanding the structural relationships that allow us to build bigger units of meaning.

LING 5570: Introduction to Diachronics
Instructor: Hannah Haynie

This course presents an overview of diachronic linguistics, including data-oriented investigations of how languages change over time in their phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, and also discussion of how contact, culture, language-internal factors and other influences impact language change over time. In this course we will build skills including analysis of sound change, morphological change, grammaticalization, more general syntactic and semantic change, comparative and internal reconstruction, and subgrouping. We will also discuss theoretical questions in the context of current literature, asking questions such as: How and why does sound change occur? How is language change influenced by the social and geographical contexts in which it occurs? Why do some types of change occur frequently across the world’s languages? What happens when languages are in contact? How does language change impact the typological patterns we find in the world’s languages? How do computational models of language change reflect the principles of the Comparative Method? and Is it possible to uncover information about more remote linguistic prehistory?

LING 5832: Natural Language Processing
Instructor: Staff

Explores the field of natural language processing as it is concerned with the theoretical and practical issues that arise in getting computers to perform useful and interesting tasks with natural language. Covers the problems of understanding complex language phenomena and building practical programs. Same as CSCI 5832.

LING 6300: Research Design in Linguistics
Instructor: Chase Raymond

Linguistics is a diverse and highly interdisciplinary field—one that which brings together a wide array of theories, frameworks, and methodologies, and which examines a range of types and sources of language data. This graduate-level seminar aims to expose students to this diversity through the lens of research design. We begin with some practical considerations—both for academic researchers in general, as well as for linguists in particular (e.g., time management, ethics, the role of the researcher). We then use code-switching and language-alternation phenomena as a brief case-in-point to illustrate how diverse approaches can be brought to bear to in analyzing a ‘single’ substantive phenomenon (which turns out, in fact, to be many phenomena!). This paves the way for more detailed discussions about data more broadly in Linguistics, focusing on the various different forms that language data may take and where they may be found (e.g., researcher-generated, naturally-occurring; spoken, textual, embodied; existing corpora, data mining, data collection). We also discuss different means of visually representing language data for analysis (e.g., different systems of transcription), and how these may intersect with methods of analysis. Across these conversations, emphasis is given to the ‘fit’ between research questions, on the one hand, and the data and approaches used to investigate them, on the other. The final unit of our course will be dedicated to research output, including journal article submission, conference presentations, and the peer-review process. As opposed to providing a comprehensive overview of a single theory or method, then, this course rather aims to offer a designedly ‘panoramic’ view of the field, where students can ‘get their feet wet’ with a range of different ways that research is done in Linguistics. The course is ideal for incoming graduate students, as well as those continuing graduate students who are interested in learning more about research processes in Linguistics.

LING 6310: Sociolinguistic Analysis
Instructor: J Calder

This course serves as a graduate-level introduction to the study of sociolinguistic variation. We explore language variation and its social implications, and how differences in language use connect with larger ideological categories such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and locality. This course explores sociolinguistics from a quantitative variationist point of view, providing both the theoretical background and methodological skills to conduct quantitative sociophonetic research in the field and to interrogate developments in the field of sociolinguistic variation.

LING 7410: Phonological Theory
Instructor: Mans Hulden

Provides an introduction to phonetic and morphophonological representations, with a focus on distinctive features; segments; prosodic structures; morphological structures; phonological processes and their interaction; naturalness conditions. Surveys the major theories of phonology as well as computational approaches used for modeling sound systems.

LING 7775: Topics in Cognitive Science
Instructor: Staff

Reading of interdisciplinary innovative theories and methodologies of cognitive science. Students participate in the ICS Distinguished Speakers series that hosts internationally recognized cognitive scientists who share and discuss their current research. Session discussions include analysis of leading edge and controversial new approaches in cognitive science. Same as CSCI 7772 and EDUC 7775 and PHIL 7810 and PSYC 7775 and SLHS 7775.

LING 7800: Computational Models of Discourse and Dialogue
Instructor: Alexis Palmer

This course is an in-depth investigation of current and historical theories and models for computing (and reasoning about) the structure and meaning of text beyond the level of individual sentences. The interactions between entities and propositions in a text are complex, varied, and FASCINATING, and modeling these interactions computationally is a huge unsolved challenge.

In this seminar-style course, we will learn about theoretical models of discourse coherence, discourse structure, and discourse relations, as well as applications in areas such as text segmentation, event ordering, coreference resolution, summarization, and automated essay scoring. Along the way, we will get to know the main frameworks and corpora for discourse processing. Students will present and discuss technical papers in the field, complete a small number of practically-oriented assignments, and complete a course research project.

This course is suitable for graduate students from Linguistics, Computer Science, Information Science, and potentially other disciplines, provided the student has some background in Linguistics and/or text analysis. Course projects and assignments will include options for both computationally-oriented students and students without that orientation.

Summer 2023

LING 1000: Language in US Society
Instructor: 
Kate Arnold-Murray (online)

Humans use language as part of almost everything we do in social life. Whether it’s an everyday activity such as chit-chatting with a friend or family member over dinner, or something as globally significant as a presidential election or UN Summit, language provides us with many of the tools we use to make it happen. And yet, while we live our lives through language (or perhaps because of that fact), most of us rarely take the time to critically examine its influence on us, nor our influence on it. This course provides an occasion for this sort of critical thinking by offering an introduction to language in U.S. society. As such, our aims are as much sociological as they are linguistic.
We begin with some foundational topics, including language acquisition, regional and dialectal variation, register and style (including shifting between them), prescriptivism and descriptivism, and some pervasive ideologies about the nature of language and how language ‘should’ be. We then explore the relationship between language and some specific social phenomena and institutions, taking as cases-in-point race/ethnicity, Deaf/Hearing communication, criminal justice systems, politics, and various forms of media. Next, we discuss language in everyday interaction—specifically how, in and through our use of language, we consistently go about categorizing, labeling, and evaluating the world, and how we use language in our everyday lives to construct our identities and build relationships. We then conclude by exploring a few phenomena in which we see some interesting similarities as we compare language use in the U.S. with language use across the globe. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own personal experiences with regard to each of these topics as we proceed through the course.
This course can be applied toward fulfillment of either the Arts & Sciences Distribution Requirement (for Social Science), or the Arts & Sciences Diversity Requirement (for U.S. Perspective).

LING 1020: Languages of the World
Instructor: 
Natalie Grothues

There are more than 7000 languages spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world’s languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a great part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization.

LING 2000: Introduction to Linguistics
Instructor: Rebecca Lee

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. In this course you will learn about structures of human language(s) and their functions. The central question in linguistics is “how does language work,” in all of its variation and complexity? You will learn what one needs to “know” to speak a language, and how language is used in social contexts. You will learn that all languages vary and change - languages are not static, and linguistic varieties differ from each other in a myriad of ways. However, there are systematic methods that we can use to analyze linguistic data in every language and linguistic variety. All languages rely on the human body and cognitive system’s capacity to make and perceive sounds or signs, the study of phonetics. All languages have a specific inventory of sounds or signs, and the study of how they systematically behave is called phonology. All languages have words, and the study of their internal structure in each language is called morphology. All languages have particular rules and patterns for how words combine, which is the study of syntax. Crucially, the function of all languages is to communicate meaning. The study of meaning conventionally encoded in lexical items is called semantics, and the study of inferential meaning in context is called pragmatics. In addition, language is always used within a dynamic sociocultural context, and thus language use informs identity construction and social meaning, the study of sociocultural linguistics. At the end of the semester you should be able to: use the basic tools of linguistic analysis to understand the fundamental properties of language(s), reason about the issues involved in the social use of language, draw generalizations based on accurate and concise observations about linguistic data, and provide explanations for observed linguistic patterns.

LING 3100: Language Sound Structures
Instructor: Alyssa Strickler

This course is about sounds in language, introducing the areas of linguistic study called phonetics and phonology. We will consider such fundamental questions as:
What are the sounds that people use in languages?
How do we produce those sounds?
What are the physical properties of those sounds?
How are these sounds used in human languages?
Along the way, we will acquire practical skills in perceiving and transcribing speech sounds, and we will learn some basic analytical techniques that enable us to address these (and other) questions.

LING 3430: Semantics
Instructor: Allen Minchun Hsiao

Semantics is a mess! I mean, how could it not be the case if semanticists (people studying language meaning) don’t even agree on what semantics is? In this 5-week online course, we will explore the major aspects/questions of semantics: (1) what is semantics, a study of language meaning, and how do people think about semantics? (2) how does language express meaning and how does meaning interact with form? (3) how does semantics interact with cognition? (4) how is meaning communicated in interpersonal contexts, and (5) how do people study semantics? As the takeaway of this course, you should have (initial) answers to these questions and be able to appreciate the diversity of semantics in the future.

LING 4420: Morphology & Syntax
Instructor: Daniel Chen

This course provides a general introduction to the linguistic subfields of morphology and syntax. Our general focus is thus on the principles of word formation (morphology) and the structures used to construct larger utterances (syntax). Over the semester we will develop skills for analyzing and describing the morphological and syntactic characteristics of grammar and will explore how these phenomena vary in the world’s languages.

 

Spring 2023

LING 1000: Language in US Society
Instructors: C. RAYMOND (section 010), M. KOSSE (online section 581and 582)

“To say language is to say society,” wrote anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, underscoring the integral relationship between the two. We use language in nearly every aspect of our social, cultural, and political lives — from mundane everyday conversations with friends and family to the forms of communication we use in school, the workplace, and in government and politics. Language use draws from and shapes our social norms, understandings, and patterns of behavior, constituting who we are as individuals and establishing our social institutions. Sometimes language becomes the focus of our collective attention — such as when debates unfold over what linguistic forms are deemed “proper” or when policies specify or proscribe certain languages that may or may not be spoken. But more often than not, we simply take language for granted — giving little thought to the way language conveys meaning, signals social affiliation and hierarchy, and impacts every level of our lives from our internal thinking to the way we interact with the wider social world. This course will provide you with an opportunity to critically examine the role language plays in society — particularly US society. Since our focus is not just on language, but also on society, we will examine how language and language practices are embedded in social interaction and intersect with a variety of social issues. The approach we will take will be grounded in the broad field of interdisciplinary scholarship known as sociocultural linguistics, which is informed by linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and related disciplines interested in studying language as a sociocultural phenomenon. We will explore questions such as, How is meaning worked out during social interaction? How does language act as a resource for individual and group identities? How does language use correlate with class, gender, race/ethnicity? How do speech patterns vary across regions and social groups in the United States? How do attitudes and ideologies about language impact the way prestige or stigma are socially assigned to different languages, language varieties, and speakers? How does language itself become a political issue, such as in debates over language and education?

This course is for undergraduate students interested in surveying the study of language in society within the field of linguistics. No prerequisites. Open to all majors. This course is approved for: Arts & Sciences Core: Contemporary Societies and United States Context; Arts & Sciences General Education: Distribution-Social Sciences and Diversity-U.S. Perspective; and MAPS: Social Science.


LING 1020: Languages of the World
Instructors: A. COWELL (section 010), J. DESJARDINS​ (online section 581 and 582)

There are more than 7000 languages spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world’s languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a great part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization.


LING 2000: Introduction to Linguistics
Instructor: 
R. FARRELLY (section 010)

Linguistics is the scientific study of language.  In this course you will learn about structures of human language(s) and their functions.  The central question in linguistics is “how does language work,” in all of its variation and complexity?  You will learn what one needs to “know” to speak a language, and how language is used in social contexts.  You will learn that all languages vary and change - languages are not static, and linguistic varieties differ from each other in a myriad of ways. However, there are systematic methods that we can use to analyze linguistic data in every language and linguistic variety.  All languages rely on the human body and cognitive system’s capacity to make and perceive sounds or signs, the study of phonetics.  All languages have a specific inventory of sounds or signs, and the study of how they systematically behave is called phonology.  All languages have words, and the study of their internal structure in each language is called morphology.  All languages have particular rules and patterns for how words combine, which is the study of syntax. Crucially, the function of all languages is to communicate meaning.  The study of meaning conventionally encoded in lexical items is called semantics, and the study of inferential meaning in context is called pragmatics.  In addition, language is always used within a dynamic sociocultural context, and thus language use informs identity construction and social meaning, the study of sociocultural linguistics.  At the end of the semester you should be able to: use the basic tools of linguistic analysis to understand the fundamental properties of language(s), reason about the issues involved in the social use of language, draw generalizations based on accurate and concise observations about linguistic data, and provide explanations for observed linguistic patterns.


LING 2400: Language, Gender, and Sexuality
Instructor: A. PARISH (online section 581)

This course serves as an undergraduate introduction to the study of language, gender, and sexuality. We explore how the use of language both reflects and constructs differences in identities related to gender and sexual orientation. How do speakers use language to signal gender differences, and what are the social implications of the use of different gendered linguistic varieties? How does speaking in a particular way contribute to the construction of stereotypes related to queerness and sexual identity? How is language used in the expression of desire? What are the social consequences of speaking in a socially stigmatized way that doesn’t conform with normative gender ideals? We will view gendered linguistic stereotypes with a critical eye, and explore the roles of language varieties in contributing to conceptualizations of gender and sexual identity.


LING 2500 Race, Ethnicity & Language
Instructor: 
J. CALDER

This course serves as an undergraduate introduction to the study of race, ethnicity, and language. We explore the ways that speakers of different racial and ethnic groups use language differently, as well as the social implications of the use of different racialized linguistic varieties. How does speaking a racialized variety contribute to the construction of stereotypes and ideas of race and ethnicity more broadly? What are the social consequences of speaking in a racialized way, e.g. in matters of education, the media, access to capital, and the law? 


LING 3100: Language Sound Structure
Instructor: E. COLES HARRIS (section 010)

This course is about sounds in language, introducing the areas of linguistic study called phonetics and phonology.  We will consider such fundamental questions as: 

  • What are the sounds that people use in languages? 
  • How do we produce those sounds? 
  • What are the physical properties of those sounds? 
  • How are these sounds used in human languages? 

Along the way, we will acquire practical skills in perceiving and transcribing speech sounds, and we will learn some basic analytical techniques that enable us to address these (and other) questions.


LING 3430: Semantics
Instructor: B. NARASIMHAN (section 010)

In this course we will explore how we use language to convey meaning. This enterprise raises a number of interesting questions: What are the kinds of meanings conveyed by the lexical and grammatical devices available in a language? Do languages differ in how they convey meaning? How much does context contribute to our understanding of meaning? What methods can we use to study meaning? We will investigate these and a range of other issues in semantics and pragmatics, focusing on both data and theory.


LING 3550/LING 6300: Talk at Work: Language Use in Institutional Contexts
Instructor: C. RAYMOND

This course provides an overview of language use in various workplace settings, with an emphasis on hands-on data analysis. While this may be done in myriad ways, in this class we will use the theories and methods of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics (CA/IL) to consider naturally-occurring language use a range of institutional contexts. Some of the audio-/videorecorded contexts we will draw upon include: 911 emergency calls, doctor-patient consultations, news interviews, customer-service encounters, classroom discourse, and courtroom interaction. After considering what makes these occasions of language use distinct from so-called ‘ordinary’ or ‘mundane’ talk (such as chit-chatting with a friend at dinner), our focus will be on how specific language practices can affect and even constitute these social institutions’ processes, objectives, and outcomes. Given the important role that language demonstrably plays in these institutional settings, we will also spend some time addressing language-based inequalities in such contexts, as well as some of the laws and policies that govern language in the workplace. 

As opposed to a lecture-only class, this course is designed to be as ‘hands-on’ as possible. That is, students will be expected to take what we learn in lecture and in the readings, and apply that knowledge to novel data they haven’t seen before. As such, ample time will be devoted to data-focused activities.


LING 4560: Language Development
Instructor: C. MEYERS (section 010)

How do children develop language? In a relatively short span of time, children acquire all aspects of language. This class explores the development of phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics in the context of children from infant to school-age.  This multi-disciplinary class highlights language acquisition theories, cognition and its relation to language, and theory of mind.  Students are asked to apply knowledge learned in this course to analyze children's language development through videos and language transcripts.  Beyond typical development of language, language differences, bilingual language development, and a few disorders associated with language development such as autism and hearing loss are also explored.  


LING 4610/LING 5610: Pedagogical Grammar for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) ​
Instructor: R. FARRELLY

Pedagogical Grammar for TESOL provides an introduction to the study of English grammar, with consideration of both prescriptive and descriptive views on teaching, learning and employing English grammar for communicative purposes. We focus on understanding the form, meaning, and use of grammatical constructions and how to teach these constructions to learners of English as an additional language (EAL). The course provides opportunities to deliver grammar-based activities through micro-teaching, as well as the chance to deliver mini lessons to multilingual language learners with local and global partners, such as the International English Center at CU Boulder and The American Home in Vladimir, Russia.


LING 4800: Language and Culture
Instructor: M. ATTWA

This course is an introduction to the relationship between language and culture. The course presents major theories and approaches in the field of linguistic anthropology to enable an understanding of how language reveals and shapes social values, meaning and knowledge. Through investigating different theoretical approaches and empirical studies, students will learn how issues such as diversity, identity, race, and power are intertwined in everyday language use and can be traced in institutional systems of societies. The course has three parts. Part I introduces some foundational concepts within historical overview of the field. Part II discusses the approaches to study language use in social aggregations to maintain or construct different identities. Part III introduces the relationship between language and power through the lens of ideology and globalization. Each of the three parts has two sections; the first section gives more focus on theoretical approaches while the second reviews some empirical studies.


LING 4910/LING 5910: TESOL Practicum
Instructor: R. FARRELLY

The TESOL practicum provides a carefully mentored teaching experience to help novice teachers develop and enhance the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to enact effective instructional practices with English language learners. The TESOL practicum provides the opportunity for student teachers to theorize practice as they engage with language learners in the classroom alongside a cooperating teacher who serves as a model, mentor and source of critical feedback. Students will demonstrate their pedagogical and professional knowledge through reflections on classroom observations, instructional design elements (e.g., lesson plans), delivery of original activities in the classroom, and post-teaching reflections in writing, video and face-to-face consultations with the practicum supervisor. A culminating deliverable from this course is an online teaching portfolio comprising a teaching philosophy statement, a complete unit plan, reflections on teaching, and a narrative on professional responsibility. 


LING 5140: CLASIC Capstone
Instructor: S. BROWN

In this capstone to the Computational Linguistics, Analytics, Search and Informatics (CLASIC) professional master's program, we will review each student's internship project and prepare presentations and technical reports based on those internships. Students will present their work on the annual Industry Day or at an Advisory Board meeting to industry representatives. They will also submit a paper to a relevant conference or workshop. Previously offered as a special topics course.


LING 5410: Phonology
Instructor: R. SCARBOROUGH

Studies sound systems of language. Introduces both principles of organization of sound systems and major kinds of phonological structures found worldwide. Provides extensive practice in applying phonological principles to data analysis.


LING 5430: Semantics & Pragmatics
Instructor: A. PALMER

In this course we will examine the nature of linguistic meaning. We will explore the structure of semantic categories as well as different types of meaning relationships in the lexicon. We will investigate variation in how meaning is encoded across languages and ask how such variation affects thinking. Additionally, we will explore how meaning relates to the interpersonal context, including the ways in which meaning can be implied rather than explicitly stated. The course will focus on these as well as related themes in a discussion-oriented format.


LING 6200: Issues & Methods in Cognitive Science
Instructor: J. MARTIN

Interdisciplinary introduction to cognitive science, examining ideas from cognitive psychology, philosophy, education, and linguistics via computational modeling and psychological experimentation. Includes philosophy of mind; learning; categorization; vision and mental imagery; consciousness; problem solving; decision making, and game-theory; language processing; connectionism. No background in computer science will be presumed.


LING 6320: Linguistic Anthropology
Instructor: K. HALL

Linguistic anthropology, one of the four classic subfields of anthropology, seeks to analyze culture and society ethnographically, semiotically, and theoretically as emergent in language and discourse. This graduate-level introduction to the field examines language as a form of action through which social relations and cultural forms are constituted. The seminar is organized around recently published ethnographies that deeply engage key ideas in contemporary linguistic anthropology, such as (in order on the syllabus): voice, connection, translation, image, raciolinguistics, script, mediatization, authenticity, neoliberalism, neurodiversity, and language death. Because social subjectivity is produced, challenged, and affirmed through linguistic practice, the readings required for the course view speakers and hearers as embedded within complex relations of nation, race, class, gender, and sexuality. This seminar has several goals: (1) to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the historical development of theory and practice in the field of linguistic anthropology; (2) to equip students with the analytic tools necessary to understand, evaluate, and engage contemporary research in linguistic anthropology; (3) to explore the potential of ethnography for sociocultural linguistic analysis more generally; and (4) to bring students to a critical awareness of the place of language in the constitution of social, cultural, and political relations.

Students may register for this course through either Anthropology or Linguistics. The course may also be taken a second time for credit; the readings and topics shift each time it is taught to reflect current developments and publications in the field. This semester, we will read eleven full-length ethnographies on language and society published in the last five years to “get to know” recent developments in the field on an intimate level. These texts have been chosen to represent a diversity of ways that one can forge a sustained argument in linguistic anthropology. 


LING 7100: Field Methods
Instructor:
A. GUTIERREZ

This course introduces students to how to do linguistic documentation and field research. It covers basic methodologies for eliciting data and recording natural discourse, for analyzing a language correctly and efficiently based on such data, for creating metadata, for labeling data in cross-linguistically useful ways (both for typologists and corpus/computational approaches), and for archiving, sharing and analyzing the data using common field and lab tools such as FLEx, ELAN, Praat, and xml. Also discussed will be sharing data with local communities.


LING 7415/LING 7425: ICS Practicum
Instructor: S. D'MELLO

Independent, interdisciplinary research project in cognitive science for advanced graduate students pursuing a joint PhD in an approved core discipline and cognitive science. Research projects integrate at least two areas within the cognitive sciences: psychology, computer science, linguistics, education, philosophy. Students need commitments from two mentors for their project.


LING 7775: Topics in Cognitive Science
Instructor: S. D'MELLO

Reading of interdisciplinary innovative theories and methodologies of cognitive science. Students participate in the ICS Distinguished Speakers series that hosts internationally recognized cognitive scientists who share and discuss their current research. Session discussions include analysis of leading edge and controversial new approaches in cognitive science.


LING 7800 Language Revitalization
Instructor: J. DUPRIS & A. GUTIERREZ

This advanced graduate seminar introduces upper division and graduate students to fundamental themes in language revitalization research; starting with the assumption that language shift and revitalization do not occur in a sociopolitical vacuum, so they thus must be investigated, evaluated, and theorized accordingly (Leonard 2020). The focus will be on languages worldwide, though instructors’ primary expertise are in Indigenous languages of Mexico and the United States. The course will use questions that engage the relations between individual and community, people and polity, research methods and political commitments, or alienation and violence in our everyday practices. We will examine case studies of community projects, sociolinguistic behaviors, and other symbolic practices that mobilize language as a foundational category for collective action within shifting political-legal contexts. Highlighted themes of the course include racialization, indigenous peoples, and human rights.


LING 7800 Computational Discourse Methods
Instructor: A. PALMER

This course is an in-depth investigation of current and historical theories and models for computing (and reasoning about) the structure and meaning of text beyond the level of individual sentences. The interactions between entities and propositions in a text are complex, varied, and FASCINATING, and modeling these interactions computationally is a huge unsolved challenge.

In this seminar-style course, we will learn about theoretical models of discourse coherence, discourse structure, and discourse relations, as well as applications in areas such as text segmentation, event ordering, coreference resolution, summarization, and automated essay scoring. Along the way, we will get to know the main frameworks and corpora for discourse processing. Students will present and discuss technical papers in the field, complete a small number of practically-oriented assignments, and complete a course research project.

This course is suitable for graduate students from Linguistics, Computer Science, Information Science, and potentially other disciplines, provided the student has some background in Linguistics and/or text analysis. Students pursuing the CLASIC degree are expected to have taken CSCI/LING 5832 (Natural Language Processing) or have equivalent background in CL/NLP. Course projects and assignments will include options for both computationally-oriented students and students without that orientation

 

Fall 2022

LING 1000: Language in US Society
Instructors: Kira Hall (section 010), Maureen Kosse (online section 581 and 582)

“To say language is to say society,” wrote anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, underscoring the integral relationship between the two. We use language in nearly every aspect of our social, cultural, and political lives — from mundane everyday conversations with friends and family to the forms of communication we use in school, the workplace, and in government and politics. Language use draws from and shapes our social norms, understandings, and patterns of behavior, constituting who we are as individuals and establishing our social institutions. Sometimes language becomes the focus of our collective attention — such as when debates unfold over what linguistic forms are deemed “proper” or when policies specify or proscribe certain languages that may or may not be spoken. But more often than not, we simply take language for granted — giving little thought to the way language conveys meaning, signals social affiliation and hierarchy, and impacts every level of our lives from our internal thinking to the way we interact with the wider social world. This course will provide you with an opportunity to critically examine the role language plays in society — particularly US society. Since our focus is not just on language, but also on society, we will examine how language and language practices are embedded in social interaction and intersect with a variety of social issues. The approach we will take will be grounded in the broad field of interdisciplinary scholarship known as sociocultural linguistics, which is informed by linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and related disciplines interested in studying language as a sociocultural phenomenon. We will explore questions such as, How is meaning worked out during social interaction? How does language act as a resource for individual and group identities? How does language use correlate with class, gender, race/ethnicity? How do speech patterns vary across regions and social groups in the United States? How do attitudes and ideologies about language impact the way prestige or stigma are socially assigned to different languages, language varieties, and speakers? How does language itself become a political issue, such as in debates over language and education?

This course is for undergraduate students interested in surveying the study of language in society within the field of linguistics. No prerequisites. Open to all majors. This course is approved for: Arts & Sciences Core: Contemporary Societies and United States Context; Arts & Sciences General Education: Distribution-Social Sciences and Diversity-U.S. Perspective; and MAPS: Social Science.

LING 1010: Study of Words
Instructors: Jared Desjardins

English is a Germanic language, but about 60% of its words come from Latin or Greek. In this class, we will trace these words back to their origins by breaking them down into their component parts. We will use word histories to investigate how and why word meanings change—whether through changes in cultural institutions and values, as the result of cultural contact, or via the human imaginative capacity. At a practical level, you will increase the number of hard words that you can use appropriately in writing and conversation, and learn to figure out the meanings of hard words that you have never seen before. Your grade will be based on your scores on 8 problem sets, 7 online quizzes, 2 tests and an online final exam. You need only one concise text and its associated workbook: English Words from Latin & Greek Elements, Ayers, Worthen & Cherry (University of Arizona Press). You will also need an iclicker. The course is fun, doable and teaches a skill of lifelong value. You’ll never think about words quite the same way again.

LING 1020: Languages of the World
Instructors: Andrew Cowell (section 010)

This introductory course explores the diversity of human language. We will learn about language
families and how many of the world’s languages are related to each other, as well as the general
origins of language. We will examine the basic features of language (sounds, grammar,
vocabulary), and look at unusual and interesting features that occur in certain languages. The
course will also cover the origins and development of different writing systems. We will look at
human history and migrations, to understand how languages and their speakers ended up
where they are today – often quite unexpectedly. There will also be a focus on language
contact, borrowing of words between languages, and a look at the diverse origins of English
vocabulary. We will look at artificial and invented languages, as well as ancient languages and
how they can be deciphered. The course will also cover the social usages of languages – things
like politeness, power and ideologies related to language. There will also be a section on
language endangerment, and the ways many communities around the world are working to
maintain or revitalize their languages in the face of globalization. In sum, the course will
combine some of the technical aspects of basic linguistics with a survey of history, culture,
politics, ecology and technology as they relate to human language.

Instructors: Aous Mansouri (online section 581)

There are more than 7000 languages spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world’s languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a great part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization.
 

LING 1200: Programming for Linguists
Instructors: Alexis Palmer

This class presents techniques for computer programming in high level programming languages such as Python to address a range of problems with a specific focus on language processing and linguistics. The class is suitable for students with little to no prior experience in computing or programming.
This course covers the fundamentals of programming using the programming language Python. After the course, students should be familiar with variables, data types, control structures, reading and writing files, functions, and basic data structures. The focus is on program development for natural language processing and computational linguistics. Students will become familiar with programming and using third-party libraries to accomplish fundamental tasks in computing.

LING 1900: Literacy Practicum
Instructor: Andrew Ting

Students enrolled in the community-based learning Literacy Practicum earn an extra hour of credit while working with literacy and language learners in the Boulder community.  Undergraduate volunteers, or “Buff Buddies,” may choose to work with children, teenagers, or adults in programs sponsored by one of our four community partners: University Hill Elementary School, Boulder Public Library, Student-Worker Alliance Program, and Family Learning Center.  The program is open to students co-enrolled in one of the department's sociolinguistic or TESOL courses, or previously enrolled in Ling 1900. Students will be contacted early in the semester by the Literacy Practicum team regarding the dates and times of each program and the required orientation. For more information about this rewarding learning experience, visit the Literacy Practicum website at https://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/literacy-practicum. We hope you will consider joining the Practicum!
 

LING 2000: Introduction to Linguistics
Instructor: Rai Farrelly

What is language? What features are constant across linguistic systems? What features vary? Do these features define language as unique to humans? 

In this course you will gain a general understanding of the principles of the organization of language and the methods of linguistic inquiry, focusing on five major areas of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax. We will explore the physiology of speech production, the systematic organization of sounds in a language and how the streams of sound are divided into meaningful parts. We will look at how meaning is encoded in words and parts of words, and how combinations of words form larger structures in sentences and in discourse. Throughout the course, we will discuss the application of the material to topics in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, historical linguistics, and language acquisition. By the end of this course, you should be able to: analyze language data and identify linguistic structures, even in languages you do not speak; understand the difference between what language users think they do and what they actually do with language; and discuss language and language-related topics in ways that are both technically precise and accessible to the linguist and non-linguist alike.

LING 3005: Cognitive Science
Instructor: Ronald Carston

Introduces cognitive science, drawing from psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and linguistics. Studies the linguistic relativity hypothesis, consciousness, categorization, linguistic rules, the mind-body problem, nature versus nurture, conceptual structure and metaphor, logic/problem solving and judgment. Emphasizes the nature, implications and limitations of the computational model of mind.

LING 3100: Language Sound Structure
Instructor: Lizzie Goodrich

This course is about sounds in language, introducing the areas of linguistic study called phonetics and phonology.  We will consider such fundamental questions as: 

  • What are the sounds that people use in languages? 
  • How do we produce those sounds? 
  • What are the physical properties of those sounds? 
  • How are these sounds used in human languages? 

Along the way, we will acquire practical skills in perceiving and transcribing speech sounds, and we will learn some basic analytical techniques that enable us to address these (and other) questions.

LING3220: American Indigenous Languages
Instructor: Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo

This course examines various linguistic characteristics of Native American Languages as well as their social and cultural contexts. Two-three weeks of the course involve looking at one Native American language in detail from a linguistic standpoint – Dixhsa (a variety of Zapotec language spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico). The course broadens its focus to examine all Native American languages, including topics such as place names, personal names, traditional oral narratives, ritual and oratory, language and worldview, and language endangerment and revitalization. Each student will choose one native American language as a personal focus for the semester, to supplement the in-class coverage. 

LING 3430: Semantics
Instructor: Mona Attwa

In this course we will explore how we use language to convey meaning. This enterprise raises a number of interesting questions: What are the kinds of meanings conveyed by the lexical and grammatical devices available in a language? Do languages differ in how they convey meaning? How much does context contribute to our understanding of meaning? What methods can we use to study meaning? We will investigate these and a range of other issues in semantics and pragmatics, focusing on both data and theory.

LING 3832: Natural Language Processing
Instructor: Mans Hulden

Surveys the fundamental problems, models, and algorithms found and used in the processing of natural language. Computational linguistics is a large field and we will only be able to cover a selection of the vast range of methods employed to solve tasks involving natural language. However, arguably there exists a "core vocabulary" of techniques shared by most practitioners and researchers in the field, which we will focus on. 

LING 4220: Language and Mind
Instructor: Bhuvana Narasimhan

Does the language we speak influence how we think? Some people believe that this position–the linguistic relativity hypothesis–is "wrong, all wrong" (Pinker 1994). For many researchers, language is just a tool for expressing concepts that all humans largely share. Others are convinced that our thoughts are deeply influenced by the language we speak, influencing how we perceive, categorize, remember, and reason about the world.

In this course we will evaluate empirical research that supports or refutes the linguistic relativity hypothesis in different conceptual domains, such as color, space, motion, objects, and time. Some of the questions we will ask are: Do the color distinctions encoded in our language influence how we categorize color? Does our writing system influence how we conceptualize time? How do speakers of a language without a number system construe quantity? Can we disentangle cultural versus linguistic influences on thinking?

We will discuss different theories about the relationship between language and mind during weekly discussions, and you will learn to run your own experiments to test different versions of the linguistic relativity hypothesis

LING 4420: Morphology and Syntax
Instructor: Kris Stenzel​

This course provides a general introduction to the linguistic subfields of morphology and syntax. Our focus is thus on the principles of word formation (morphology) and the structures used to construct larger utterances (syntax). Over the semester we will develop skills for analyzing and describing the morphological and syntactic characteristics of grammar and will explore how these phenomena vary in the world’s languages.

LING 4560: Language Development
Instructor: Karen Lynch

How do children develop language? In a relatively short span of time, children acquire all aspects of language. This class explores the development of phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics in the context of children from infant to school-age.  This multi-disciplinary class highlights language acquisition theories, cognition and its relation to language, and theory of mind.  Students are asked to apply knowledge learned in this course to analyze children's language development through videos and language transcripts.  Beyond typical development of language, language differences, bilingual language development, and a few disorders associated with language development such as autism and hearing loss are also explored.  

LING 4620/5620: ORAL SKILLS TESOL
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

This course explores pedagogical approaches for developing second language oral skills in English. We consider the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching the macroskills - listening and speaking - as well as related microskills, such as pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Pedagogical concepts are situated against the backdrop of various teaching contexts for learners with a range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Praxis occurs through lesson development and analysis and interactions with language learners in the community. The culminating project of the course is the design of open acceses curricular units that incorporate social justice themes into lessons that target second language oral skills.

LING 4630/5630 SLA and TESOL Principles and Practices
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly and Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo

This course is an introduction to the Principles and Practices of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) field. The course provides students who are prospective, new, and/or experienced teachers of additional languages with a current overview of the field of TESOL and opportunities to build and expand pedagogical knowledge of strategies for language teaching and learning. While the course is aimed primarily at the teaching and learning of English, the course is also generally applicable to the teaching and learning of any additional languages. We will read about, observe, and analyze methods and materials for teaching vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, pronunciation and writing. During this course, you will engage in the learning process as we apply skills and approaches from the course to the teaching and learning of Dixhza (or Zapotec). Assuming the role of a beginning language learner will foster theory-practice connections, provide experience with home language use for language learning, and raise awareness about an Indigenous language of Mexico. Languages other than English and Dixhza will also be used for modeling and demonstration purposes.  We will explore methods and materials for language teaching principles, discuss educational trends, and reflect on global and local contexts for English language teaching.

LING 5030: Linguistic Phonetics
Instructor: Evan Coles-Harris

This course will give a practical and theoretical introduction to articulatory, acoustic, and auditory phonetics. We will be considering fundamental questions like:  How do we produce speech?  How do we perceive speech? What are the physical properties of the speech sounds we produce and perceive?  How does the nature of these processes influence the sound patterns of languages?
Along the way you will gain lots of practical skills as well. You will (i) Acquire skills to transcribe spoken language data in any language & interpret the transcriptions of others; (ii) Learn to generate and interpret acoustic analyses, including waveforms and spectrograms, and collect acoustic measurements from them; (iii) Learn to design and implement controlled phonetic experiments for linguistic hypothesis testing; (iv) Recognize phonetic variation in spoken language (contextual, dialectal, stylistic, idiosyncratic); (v) Understand basic principles of articulation and how they yield specific acoustic consequences.

LING 5200: Computational and Corpus Linguistics
Instructor: Susan Brown

This course is an introduction to the use of corpora for linguistic analysis and natural language processing. A major focus is the development of computational skills, preparing the student for CSCI 5832 (Natural Language Processing). Previous completion of LING 1200 or CSCI 1300 highly recommended. Topics include:
• methods of corpus analysis
• corpus design and annotation
• corpus-based search tools
• the UNIX operating system
• UNIX tools for language analysis
• Intermediate Python programming
• Natural Language Tool Kit

LING 5420: Morphology and Syntax
Instructor: Aous Mansouri

This course provides a general introduction to the principles of word formation (morphology) and sentence structure (syntax). We will investigate many word formation processes and syntactic structures found across the world’s languages, examining data from a diverse range of grammars along the way. This course will also explore the variation that exists in morphosyntax, investigating how languages use morphology and syntax differently and what sort of typological patterns we find as a result. Along the way we will build skills for analyzing word structure (including morphophonological processes and morphosyntactic patterns) and for understanding the structural relationships that allow us to build bigger units of meaning.

LING 5570: Introduction to Diachronics
Instructor: Hannah Haynie

This course presents an overview of diachronic linguistics, including data-oriented investigations of how languages change over time in their phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, and also discussion of how contact, culture, language-internal factors and other influences impact language change over time. In this course we will build skills including analysis of sound change, morphological change, grammaticalization, more general syntactic and semantic change, comparative and internal reconstruction, and subgrouping. We will also discuss theoretical questions in the context of current literature, asking questions such as: How and why does sound change occur? How is language change influenced by the social and geographical contexts in which it occurs? Why do some types of change occur frequently across the world’s languages? What happens when languages are in contact? How does language change impact the typological patterns we find in the world’s languages? How do computational models of language change reflect the principles of the Comparative Method? and Is it possible to uncover information about more remote linguistic prehistory?

LING 5800/7800 Geography and Language
Instructor: Hannah Haynie

This course examines language from a spatial perspective, investigating the geography of language use, language change, and language diversity. Readings for the course will focus on recent research across multiple subfields of linguistics as well as interdisciplinary work that incorporates spatial perspectives or notions of place into the study of language. Over the course of the semester we will explore spatial phenomena in linguistics at multiple scales, from notions of place identity in sociolinguistics to dialect geography, areal linguistics, and global patterns of linguistic diversity. Students will engage critically with research that incorporates interdisciplinary perspectives and methods, and will have opportunities to explore spatial patterns and processes, or notions of place, in the areas of linguistics they are interested in. The course is open to MA and PhD students (as well as advanced undergraduate students with instructor consent).

LING 5832: Natural Language Processing
Instructor: James Martin

Explores the field of natural language processing as it is concerned with the theoretical and practical issues that arise in getting computers to perform useful and interesting tasks with natural language. Covers the problems of understanding complex language phenomena and building practical programs.

LING 6450: Syntactic Analysis
Instructor: Laura Michaelis

This course introduces the tools that formal theories of syntax use to represent the connection between meaning and grammatical patterns at every level—from the noun phrase to the clause to the complex sentence. We will focus on the following aspects of the form-meaning connection: the relationship between verb meaning and verb morphosyntax, the relationship between semantic participant roles and grammatical relations, the relationship between semantic dependency and constituent structure and the relationship between discourse relations and syntactic relations. We will ask how various models meet the challenge of describing free word-order languages, and idiomatic patterns in various languages. The emphasis throughout the course will be on the following big questions:

  • How much hierarchical structure do we need in syntax, if any?
  • What's a head?
  • How do we determine whether a group of words is a constituent?
  • Why assume that syntax and semantics are two separate levels in grammar?
  • Is grammar a set of abstract principles or is it instead a set of constructions?
  • How is the meaning of a complex expression determined?
  • How are idiomatic and regular patterns interleaved in syntax?
  • Are grammatical functions like subject universal?
  • Are there languages that have no syntax?
  • Is syntax adapted to our communicative needs?
  • Can we find traces of grammar evolution in our current grammar?

We will begin by studying the intellectual environment that led up to the development of generative syntax in the 1950s, including the study of formal languages in computer science. We will then study the workings of transformational-generative syntax, the arguments that linguists have made against its central guiding assumption—the autonomy of syntax—and alternative models that accord a central place to the symbolic and communicative functions of syntax. We will learn about several such theories, including Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, which uses signs (modeled as feature structures) to capture generalizations previously taken as evidence for hierarchical syntactic structure and syntactic transformations. We will use this model to study anaphoric reference and properties of grammatical types like auxiliary verb. 

Your grade in this class will be based on your performance on 10 problems sets assigned throughout the semester. Each problem set consists of 3-4 questions. These questions ask you to describe generalizations in small data sets using appropriate tools of syntactic representation (like tree diagrams and attribute-value matrices). The required text is Levine, Syntactic Analysis: An HPSG-based Approach.​

LING 7415/LING 7425: ICS Practicum
Instructor: Tamara Sumner

Independent, interdisciplinary research project in cognitive science for advanced graduate students pursuing a joint PhD in an approved core discipline and cognitive science. Research projects integrate at least two areas within the cognitive sciences: psychology, computer science, linguistics, education, philosophy. Students need commitments from two mentors for their project.

LING 7775: Topics in Cognitive Science
Instructor: Tamara Sumner

Reading of interdisciplinary innovative theories and methodologies of cognitive science. Students participate in the ICS Distinguished Speakers series that hosts internationally recognized cognitive scientists who share and discuss their current research. Session discussions include analysis of leading edge and controversial new approaches in cognitive science.

LING 7800: Linguistics Circle
Instructor: 

Linguistics Circle (LingCircle) is a weekly to biweekly colloquium and workshop series sponsored by the Department of Linguistics.

Summer 2022

LING 1000: Language in US Society
Instructors: Maureen Kosse (section 001), Katherine Arnold-Murray (online section 581)

“To say language is to say society,” wrote anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, underscoring the integral relationship between the two. We use language in nearly every aspect of our social, cultural, and political lives — from mundane everyday conversations with friends and family to the forms of communication we use in school, the workplace, and in government and politics. Language use draws from and shapes our social norms, understandings, and patterns of behavior, constituting who we are as individuals and establishing our social institutions. Sometimes language becomes the focus of our collective attention — such as when debates unfold over what linguistic forms are deemed “proper” or when policies specify or proscribe certain languages that may or may not be spoken. But more often than not, we simply take language for granted — giving little thought to the way language conveys meaning, signals social affiliation and hierarchy, and impacts every level of our lives from our internal thinking to the way we interact with the wider social world. This course will provide you with an opportunity to critically examine the role language plays in society — particularly US society. Since our focus is not just on language, but also on society, we will examine how language and language practices are embedded in social interaction and intersect with a variety of social issues. The approach we will take will be grounded in the broad field of interdisciplinary scholarship known as sociocultural linguistics, which is informed by linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and related disciplines interested in studying language as a sociocultural phenomenon. We will explore questions such as, How is meaning worked out during social interaction? How does language act as a resource for individual and group identities? How does language use correlate with class, gender, race/ethnicity? How do speech patterns vary across regions and social groups in the United States? How do attitudes and ideologies about language impact the way prestige or stigma are socially assigned to different languages, language varieties, and speakers? How does language itself become a political issue, such as in debates over language and education?

This course is for undergraduate students interested in surveying the study of language in society within the field of linguistics. No prerequisites. Open to all majors. This course is approved for: Arts & Sciences Core: Contemporary Societies and United States Context; Arts & Sciences General Education: Distribution-Social Sciences and Diversity-U.S. Perspective; and MAPS: Social Science.

LING 1020: Languages of the World
Instructors: Natalie Grothues

There are more than 7000 languages spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world’s languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a great part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization.

LING 2000: Introduction to Linguistics
Instructor: Rebecca Lee

Linguistics is the scientific study of language.  In this course you will learn about structures of human language(s) and their functions.  The central question in linguistics is “how does language work,” in all of its variation and complexity?  You will learn what one needs to “know” to speak a language, and how language is used in social contexts.  You will learn that all languages vary and change - languages are not static, and linguistic varieties differ from each other in a myriad of ways. However, there are systematic methods that we can use to analyze linguistic data in every language and linguistic variety.  All languages rely on the human body and cognitive system’s capacity to make and perceive sounds or signs, the study of phonetics.  All languages have a specific inventory of sounds or signs, and the study of how they systematically behave is called phonology.  All languages have words, and the study of their internal structure in each language is called morphology.  All languages have particular rules and patterns for how words combine, which is the study of syntax. Crucially, the function of all languages is to communicate meaning.  The study of meaning conventionally encoded in lexical items is called semantics, and the study of inferential meaning in context is called pragmatics.  In addition, language is always used within a dynamic sociocultural context, and thus language use informs identity construction and social meaning, the study of sociocultural linguistics.  At the end of the semester you should be able to: use the basic tools of linguistic analysis to understand the fundamental properties of language(s), reason about the issues involved in the social use of language, draw generalizations based on accurate and concise observations about linguistic data, and provide explanations for observed linguistic patterns.

LING 4420: Morphology and Syntax
Instructor: Jared Desjardins

This course provides a general introduction to the linguistic subfields of morphology and syntax. Our focus is thus on the principles of word formation (morphology) and the structures used to construct larger utterances (syntax). Over the semester we will develop skills for analyzing and describing the morphological and syntactic characteristics of grammar and will explore how these phenomena vary in the world’s languages.

 

Spring 2022

LING 1000: Language in US Society
Instructors: Adam Hodges (section 010), Maureen Kosse (online sections 581 & 582)

“To say language is to say society,” wrote anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, underscoring the integral relationship between the two. We use language in nearly every aspect of our social, cultural, and political lives — from mundane everyday conversations with friends and family to the forms of communication we use in school, the workplace, and in government and politics. Language use draws from and shapes our social norms, understandings, and patterns of behavior, constituting who we are as individuals and establishing our social institutions. Sometimes language becomes the focus of our collective attention — such as when debates unfold over what linguistic forms are deemed “proper” or when policies specify or proscribe certain languages that may or may not be spoken. But more often than not, we simply take language for granted — giving little thought to the way language conveys meaning, signals social affiliation and hierarchy, and impacts every level of our lives from our internal thinking to the way we interact with the wider social world. This course will provide you with an opportunity to critically examine the role language plays in society — particularly US society. Since our focus is not just on language, but also on society, we will examine how language and language practices are embedded in social interaction and intersect with a variety of social issues. The approach we will take will be grounded in the broad field of interdisciplinary scholarship known as sociocultural linguistics, which is informed by linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and related disciplines interested in studying language as a sociocultural phenomenon. We will explore questions such as, How is meaning worked out during social interaction? How does language act as a resource for individual and group identities? How does language use correlate with class, gender, race/ethnicity? How do speech patterns vary across regions and social groups in the United States? How do attitudes and ideologies about language impact the way prestige or stigma are socially assigned to different languages, language varieties, and speakers? How does language itself become a political issue, such as in debates over language and education?

This course is for undergraduate students interested in surveying the study of language in society within the field of linguistics. No prerequisites. Open to all majors. This course is approved for: Arts & Sciences Core: Contemporary Societies and United States Context; Arts & Sciences General Education: Distribution-Social Sciences and Diversity-U.S. Perspective; and MAPS: Social Science.

LING 1020: Languages of the World
Instructors: Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo (section 010), Aous Mansouri (online section 130R)

There are more than 7000 languages spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world’s languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a great part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization.

LING 1900: Literacy Practicum

Students enrolled in the community-based learning Literacy Practicum earn an extra hour of credit while working with literacy and language learners in the Boulder community.  Undergraduate volunteers, or “Buff Buddies,” may choose to work with children, teenagers, or adults in programs sponsored by one of our four community partners: University Hill Elementary School, Boulder Public Library, Student-Worker Alliance Program, and Family Learning Center.  The program is open to students co-enrolled in one of the department's sociolinguistic or TESOL courses, or previously enrolled in Ling 1900. Students will be contacted early in the semester by the Literacy Practicum team regarding the dates and times of each program and the required orientation. For more information about this rewarding learning experience, visit the Literacy Practicum website at https://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/literacy-practicum. We hope you will consider joining the Practicum!

LING 2000: Introduction to Linguistics
Instructor: Rai Farrelly

What is language? What features are constant across linguistic systems? What features vary? Do these features define language as unique to humans? 

In this course you will gain a general understanding of the principles of the organization of language and the methods of linguistic inquiry, focusing on five major areas of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax. We will explore the physiology of speech production, the systematic organization of sounds in a language and how the streams of sound are divided into meaningful parts. We will look at how meaning is encoded in words and parts of words, and how combinations of words form larger structures in sentences and in discourse. Throughout the course, we will discuss the application of the material to topics in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, historical linguistics, and language acquisition. By the end of this course, you should be able to: analyze language data and identify linguistic structures, even in languages you do not speak; understand the difference between what language users think they do and what they actually do with language; and discuss language and language-related topics in ways that are both technically precise and accessible to the linguist and non-linguist alike.

LING 2400: Language, Gender, and Sexuality
Instructor: Kira Hall

This course serves as an undergraduate introduction to the study of language, gender, and sexuality. We explore how the use of language both reflects and constructs differences in identities related to gender and sexual orientation. How do speakers use language to signal gender differences, and what are the social implications of the use of different gendered linguistic varieties? How does speaking in a particular way contribute to the construction of stereotypes related to queerness and sexual identity? How is language used in the expression of desire? What are the social consequences of speaking in a socially stigmatized way that doesn’t conform with normative gender ideals? We will view gendered linguistic stereotypes with a critical eye, and explore the roles of language varieties in contributing to conceptualizations of gender and sexual identity.

LING 3100: Language Sound Structures
Instructor: Jeremy Calder

This course is about sounds in language, introducing the areas of linguistic study called phonetics and phonology.  We will consider such fundamental questions as: 

  • What are the sounds that people use in languages? 
  • How do we produce those sounds? 
  • What are the physical properties of those sounds? 
  • How are these sounds used in human languages? 

Along the way, we will acquire practical skills in perceiving and transcribing speech sounds, and we will learn some basic analytical techniques that enable us to address these (and other) questions.

LING 3200: Academic Oral Communication
Instructor: Rai Farrelly

Designed for undergraduate students who speak English as an additional language, this course improves students' oral communication skills for effective academic interactions in the classroom and within their academic discipline. Specific attention is given to presentation skills -- developing, explaining and clarifying ideas -- and discussion skills such as interrupting, hedging, and responding to questions. Students deliver formal presentations and impromptu speeches, and lead and participate in group discussions. Students improve active listening skills, non-verbal communication and English pronunciation. This course does not count toward the Linguistics major or minor.

LING 3430: Semantics
Instructor: Bhuvana Narasimhan

In this course we will explore how we use language to convey meaning. This enterprise raises a number of interesting questions: What are the kinds of meanings conveyed by the lexical and grammatical devices available in a language? Do languages differ in how they convey meaning? How much does context contribute to our understanding of meaning? What methods can we use to study meaning? We will investigate these and a range of other issues in semantics and pragmatics, focusing on both data and theory.

LING 3550/LING 6300: Talk at Work: Language Use in Institutional Contexts
Instructor: Chase Raymond

This course provides an overview of language use in various workplace settings, with an emphasis on hands-on data analysis. While this may be done in myriad ways, in this class we will use the theories and methods of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics (CA/IL) to consider naturally-occurring language use a range of institutional contexts. Some of the audio-/videorecorded contexts we will draw upon include: 911 emergency calls, doctor-patient consultations, news interviews, customer-service encounters, classroom discourse, and courtroom interaction. After considering what makes these occasions of language use distinct from so-called ‘ordinary’ or ‘mundane’ talk (such as chit-chatting with a friend at dinner), our focus will be on how specific language practices can affect and even constitute these social institutions’ processes, objectives, and outcomes. Given the important role that language demonstrably plays in these institutional settings, we will also spend some time addressing language-based inequalities in such contexts, as well as some of the laws and policies that govern language in the workplace. 

As opposed to a lecture-only class, this course is designed to be as ‘hands-on’ as possible. That is, students will be expected to take what we learn in lecture and in the readings, and apply that knowledge to novel data they haven’t seen before. As such, ample time will be devoted to data-focused activities.

LING 4100/LING 5800: Language, Race, and Indigeneity
Instructor: Joe Dupris

This course will survey historical and contemporary theories of language, race and nation in anthropology and linguistics. The goal of this course is to help advanced undergraduate students and beginning graduate students engage language, race and indigeneity, identify key arguments in texts, and trace their intersections and regimentation in research practices through time. This course will examine how science, religion, and law have contributed to contemporary understandings of race and indigeneity in social-linguistic movements such as revitalization and raciolinguistics.

 

Through this course students will better compare national and racial contexts to better understand the role of language research in establishing and reproducing overarching racial categories such as “Indian” and “Indigenous” and critically evaluate research approaches in indigenous, racial, and minoritized language communities.

 

LING 4560: Language Development

How do children develop language? In a relatively short span of time, children acquire all aspects of language. This class explores the development of phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics in the context of children from infant to school-age.  This multi-disciplinary class highlights language acquisition theories, cognition and its relation to language, and theory of mind.  Students are asked to apply knowledge learned in this course to analyze children's language development through videos and language transcripts.  Beyond typical development of language, language differences, bilingual language development, and a few disorders associated with language development such as autism and hearing loss are also explored.  

LING 4610/LING 5610: Pedagogical Grammar for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) ​
Instructor: Rai Farrelly

Pedagogical Grammar for TESOL provides an introduction to the study of English grammar, with consideration of both prescriptive and descriptive views on teaching, learning and employing English grammar for communicative purposes. We focus on understanding the form, meaning, and use of grammatical constructions and how to teach these constructions to learners of English as an additional language (EAL). The course provides opportunities to deliver grammar-based activities through micro-teaching, as well as the chance to deliver mini lessons to multilingual language learners with local and global partners, such as the International English Center at CU Boulder and The American Home in Vladimir, Russia.

LING 4632/LING 6300: Machine Learning and Linguistics
Instructor: Mans Hulden

This course provides an introduction to machine learning for advanced undergraduate students (4632), and graduate students (6300), including students in the CLASIC MS program. It is an ideal course for students already knowledgeable in programming who wish to gain knowledge in natural language processing and is an intermediate course between LING 1200 (Programming for Linguistics) and LING/CSCI 5832 (Natural Language Processing).

The course covers fundamentals of classification and clustering in a natural language processing context. Students will become familiar with basic classifiers that operate on text and be able to independently implement various standard machine learning solutions to text-based processing tasks. More advanced models, such as recurrent neural networks will also be discussed and students will become familiar with software libraries for solving language-related problems with neural models. A final project is included where students solve some natural language problem with machine learning techniques.

LING 4910/LING 5910: TESOL Practicum
Instructor: Rai Farrelly

The TESOL practicum provides a carefully mentored teaching experience to help novice teachers develop and enhance the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to enact effective instructional practices with English language learners. The TESOL practicum provides the opportunity for student teachers to theorize practice as they engage with language learners in the classroom alongside a cooperating teacher who serves as a model, mentor and source of critical feedback. Students will demonstrate their pedagogical and professional knowledge through reflections on classroom observations, instructional design elements (e.g., lesson plans), delivery of original activities in the classroom, and post-teaching reflections in writing, video and face-to-face consultations with the practicum supervisor. A culminating deliverable from this course is an online teaching portfolio comprising a teaching philosophy statement, a complete unit plan, reflections on teaching, and a narrative on professional responsibility. 

LING 5140: CLASIC Capstone
Instructor: Susan Brown

In this capstone to the Computational Linguistics, Analytics, Search and Informatics (CLASIC) professional master's program, we will review each student's internship project and prepare presentations and technical reports based on those internships. Students will present their work on the annual Industry Day or at an Advisory Board meeting to industry representatives. They will also submit a paper to a relevant conference or workshop. Previously offered as a special topics course.

LING 5410: Phonology
Instructor: Mans Hulden

Studies sound systems of language. Introduces both principles of organization of sound systems and major kinds of phonological structures found worldwide. Provides extensive practice in applying phonological principles to data analysis.

LING 5430: Semantics and Pragmatics
Instructor: Bhuvana Narasimhan

In this course we will examine the nature of linguistic meaning. We will explore the structure of semantic categories as well as different types of meaning relationships in the lexicon. We will investigate variation in how meaning is encoded across languages and ask how such variation affects thinking. Additionally, we will explore how meaning relates to the interpersonal context, including the ways in which meaning can be implied rather than explicitly stated. The course will focus on these as well as related themes in a discussion-oriented format.

LING 5610/LING 4610: Pedagogical Grammar for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) ​ ​
Instructor: Rai Farrelly

Pedagogical Grammar for TESOL provides an introduction to the study of English grammar, with consideration of both prescriptive and descriptive views on teaching, learning and employing English grammar for communicative purposes. We focus on understanding the form, meaning, and use of grammatical constructions and how to teach these constructions to learners of English as an additional language (EAL). The course provides opportunities to deliver grammar-based activities through micro-teaching, as well as the chance to deliver mini lessons to multilingual language learners with local and global partners, such as the International English Center at CU Boulder and The American Home in Vladimir, Russia.

LING 5800/LING 4100: Language, Race, and Indigeneity
Instructor: Joe Dupris

Description: coming soon!

LING 5910/LING 4910: TESOL Practicum
Instructor: Rai Farrelly

The TESOL practicum provides a carefully mentored teaching experience to help novice teachers develop and enhance the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to enact effective instructional practices with English language learners. The TESOL practicum provides the opportunity for student teachers to theorize practice as they engage with language learners in the classroom alongside a cooperating teacher who serves as a model, mentor and source of critical feedback. Students will demonstrate their pedagogical and professional knowledge through reflections on classroom observations, instructional design elements (e.g., lesson plans), delivery of original activities in the classroom, and post-teaching reflections in writing, video and face-to-face consultations with the practicum supervisor. A culminating deliverable from this course is an online teaching portfolio comprising a teaching philosophy statement, a complete unit plan, reflections on teaching, and a narrative on professional responsibility. 

LING 6200: Issues & Methods in Cognitive Science
Instructor: Sidney D'Mello

Interdisciplinary introduction to cognitive science, examining ideas from cognitive psychology, philosophy, education, and linguistics via computational modeling and psychological experimentation. Includes philosophy of mind; learning; categorization; vision and mental imagery; consciousness; problem solving; decision making, and game-theory; language processing; connectionism. No background in computer science will be presumed.

LING 6300/LING 3550: Talk at Work: Language Use in Institutional Contexts
Instructor: Chase Raymond

This course provides an overview of language use in various workplace settings, with an emphasis on hands-on data analysis. While this may be done in myriad ways, in this class we will use the theories and methods of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics (CA/IL) to consider naturally-occurring language use a range of institutional contexts. Some of the audio-/videorecorded contexts we will draw upon include: 911 emergency calls, doctor-patient consultations, news interviews, customer-service encounters, classroom discourse, and courtroom interaction. After considering what makes these occasions of language use distinct from so-called ‘ordinary’ or ‘mundane’ talk (such as chit-chatting with a friend at dinner), our focus will be on how specific language practices can affect and even constitute these social institutions’ processes, objectives, and outcomes. Given the important role that language demonstrably plays in these institutional settings, we will also spend some time addressing language-based inequalities in such contexts, as well as some of the laws and policies that govern language in the workplace. 

As opposed to a lecture-only class, this course is designed to be as ‘hands-on’ as possible. That is, students will be expected to take what we learn in lecture and in the readings, and apply that knowledge to novel data they haven’t seen before. As such, ample time will be devoted to data-focused activities.

LING 6300/LING 4632: Machine Learning and Linguistics
Instructor: Mans Hulden

This course provides an introduction to machine learning for advanced undergraduate students (4632), and graduate students (6300), including students in the CLASIC MS program. It is an ideal course for students already knowledgeable in programming who wish to gain knowledge in natural language processing and is an intermediate course between LING 1200 (Programming for Linguistics) and LING/CSCI 5832 (Natural Language Processing).

The course covers fundamentals of classification and clustering in a natural language processing context. Students will become familiar with basic classifiers that operate on text and be able to independently implement various standard machine learning solutions to text-based processing tasks. More advanced models, such as recurrent neural networks will also be discussed and students will become familiar with software libraries for solving language-related problems with neural models. A final project is included where students solve some natural language problem with machine learning techniques.

LING 7310: Social Semiotic Theory
Instructor: Jeremy Calder

Semiotics is the study of signs, how they are used, and how they are interpreted. What is a sign? What are the components of a sign? How do people use signs in social, cultural, and linguistic practice and what purpose do these signs serve? What are the connections between objects and social meanings and how do these connections arise and transform? How do social meanings of signs stem from and transform social and cultural practice more broadly? This course engages with key topics and concepts in the study of semiotic theory—e.g., indexicality, iconicity, enregisterment, embodiment, agency— and how these topics bear on research in sociocultural linguistics and linguistic anthropology. We read key works in the field and engage in critical discussions.

LING 7415/LING 7425: ICS Practicum
Instructor: Sidney D'Mello

Independent, interdisciplinary research project in cognitive science for advanced graduate students pursuing a joint PhD in an approved core discipline and cognitive science. Research projects integrate at least two areas within the cognitive sciences: psychology, computer science, linguistics, education, philosophy. Students need commitments from two mentors for their project.

LING 7420: Syntactic Theory
Instructor: Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo

This research-focused seminar will center around the syntax of subordinate constructions (relativization, complementation and adverbial clauses) across the world's languages. It does not assume previous knowledge of the topic, but it will be both wide-ranging and in-depth. We will use examples from many different languages, and use a few specific languages that the instructor is most familiar with to explore these constructions in greater detail. The course will cover typological perspectives and theories. We will also devote some time discussing the morphology and syntax interference and the role of semantics in these constructions. For their final project, students will write an in-depth analysis on how subordination occurs in a language of their choice (other than their first language).

LING 7775: Topics in Cognitive Science
Instructor: Sidney D'Mello

Reading of interdisciplinary innovative theories and methodologies of cognitive science. Students participate in the ICS Distinguished Speakers series that hosts internationally recognized cognitive scientists who share and discuss their current research. Session discussions include analysis of leading edge and controversial new approaches in cognitive science.

LING 7800: Linguistics Circle

Linguistics Circle (LingCircle) is a weekly to biweekly colloquium and workshop series sponsored by the Department of Linguistics.

LING 7800: Computational Discourse Methods and Models
Instructor: Alexis Palmer

This course is an in-depth investigation of current and historical theories and models for computing (and reasoning about) the structure and meaning of text beyond the level of individual sentences. The interactions between entities and propositions in a text are complex, varied, and FASCINATING, and modeling these interactions computationally is a huge unsolved challenge.

In this seminar-style course, we will learn about theoretical models of discourse coherence, discourse structure, and discourse relations, as well as applications in areas such as text segmentation, event ordering, coreference resolution, summarization, and automated essay scoring. Along the way, we will get to know the main frameworks and corpora for discourse processing. Students will present and discuss technical papers in the field, complete a small number of practically-oriented assignments, and complete a course research project.

This course is suitable for graduate students from Linguistics, Computer Science, Information Science, and potentially other disciplines, provided the student has some background in Linguistics and/or text analysis. Students pursuing the CLASIC degree are expected to have taken CSCI/LING 5832 (Natural Language Processing) or have equivalent background in CL/NLP. Course projects and assignments will include options for both computationally-oriented students and students without that orientation.

LING 7800: Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change Communication
Instructors:  Laura Michaelis and Joseph Dupris

Fossil fuel companies are the greatest threat to planetary civilization, but we find little political will, either in the US or internationally, to end reliance on fossil fuel. Since every one of us benefits from cheap fossil fuel, climate activism feels like a form of self-harm. Must it also pit us against one another? Native and Indigenous people are suffering acute effects of climate change—severe heat, fire and drought--from Alaska to the Amazon. These interests are not simply 'special interests'. The IPCC recognizes that indigenous peoples play a central role in safeguarding more than half the world’s land. Therefore, developing effective calls to action requires us to center Native/Indigenous perspectives, history, sovereignty, trauma, and political action--from the Paiute class action against Nevada lithium mines to the Water Warriors on the front lines protesting the fracking industry. In this class, we will explore linguistically realized conceptual frames like ‘protect the protectors’ that connect human security to human survival. We will ask how the study of semantic frames—thick lexical descriptions—can inform the development of communicative strategies that honor human rights and human potential, and take us beyond the doomed project of ‘scientific communication’. We will work toward developing a panel discussion to present our findings at the UN Human Rights sponsored Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit to be held right here at CU Boulder in Fall 2022.  

Fall 2021

LING 1000: Language in US Society
Instructor: Chase Raymond

Humans use language as part of almost everything we do in social life. Whether it’s an activity as mundane as chit-chatting with a friend or family member over dinner, or something as globally significant as a presidential debate or UN Summit, language provides us with the tools to make it happen. And yet, despite the fact that we live our lives through language (or perhaps because of that fact), most of us rarely take the time to critically examine its influence on us, nor our influence on it. This course provides an occasion for this sort of critical thinking by offering an introduction to language in U.S. society. As such, our aims are as much sociological as they are linguistic. 

We will begin with some foundational topics, including regional and dialectal variation, register and style (including shifting between them), prescriptivism and descriptivism, and some pervasive ideologies about the nature of language and how language ‘should’ be. We will then explore the relationship between language and some specific social phenomena and institutions, taking as cases-in-point race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, politics, various forms of media, and the criminal justice system. In our final unit, we’ll discuss language and normativity—specifically how, in and through our use of language, we consistently go about categorizing, labeling, and evaluating the world, thus re-creating what’s ‘normal’ vs. ‘abnormal’, ‘acceptable’ vs. ‘unacceptable’, ‘right’ vs. ‘wrong’, and so on. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own personal experiences with regard to each of these topics as we proceed through the course. 

This course can be applied toward fulfillment of either the Arts & Sciences Distribution Requirement (for Social Science), or the Arts & Sciences Diversity Requirement (for U.S. Perspective).

LING 2000: Introduction to Linguistics
Instructor: Rai Farrelly

Linguistics is the scientific study of language.  In this course you will learn about structures of human language(s) and their functions.  The central question in linguistics is “how does language work,” in all of its variation and complexity?  You will learn what one needs to “know” to speak a language, and how language is used in social contexts.  You will learn that all languages vary and change - language is not static, and languages differ from each other in myriad ways. However, there are systematic methods that we can use to analyze linguistic data in every language.  All spoken languages rely on the human vocal tract and cognitive system’s capacity to make and perceive sounds - the study of phonetics.  All spoken languages have a specific inventory of sounds, and the study of how they systematically behave is called phonology.  All languages have words, and the study of their internal structure in each language is called morphology.  All languages have particular rules and patterns for how words combine, which is the study of syntax. Crucially, the function of all languages is to communicate meaning.  The study of meaning conventionally encoded in lexical items is called semantics, and the study of inferential meaning in context is called pragmatics.  In addition, language is always used within a dynamic sociocultural context, and thus language use informs identity formation and social meaning - the study of sociocultural linguistics.  

LING 3800: Language Discrimination in Social Interaction
Instructor: Chase Raymond

This research-focused seminar will center around a newly created, online corpus of interactional data, called the Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction (CLDI). The CLDI includes naturally-occurring footage of individuals being harassed in some way for the language they are speaking (e.g., folks speaking Spanish together while at a store or restaurant in the U.S.). Such interactions constitute concrete instances of a particular genre of ‘language policing’ in public social life, which students in this course will explore by conceiving and conducting their own semester-length research projects using the data in the CLDI. We will meet in-person on Tuesdays, and via Zoom (synchronously) on Thursdays. Recommended pre-requisite: Junior standing or above.

LING 4100: Language and Mind
Instructor: Bhuvana Narasimhan

Does the language we speak influence how we think? Some people believe that this position–the linguistic relativity hypothesis–is "wrong, all wrong" (Pinker 1994). For many researchers, language is just a tool for expressing concepts that all humans largely share. Others are convinced that our thoughts are deeply influenced by the language we speak, influencing how we perceive, categorize, remember, and reason about the world.

In this course we will evaluate empirical research that supports or refutes the linguistic relativity hypothesis in different conceptual domains, such as color, space, motion, objects, and time. Some questions we will ask are: Do the color distinctions encoded in our language influence how we categorize color? Does our writing system influence how we conceptualize time? Do children have universal concepts before they learn language? Do bilinguals classify events in different ways depending on the language they are using?

We will discuss different theories about the relationship between language and cognition during weekly discussions, and you will learn to run your own experiments to test different versions of the linguistic relativity.

LING 4200/5200: Computational Corpus Linguistics

Instructor: Susan Brown

This course is an introduction to the use of corpora for linguistic analysis and natural language processing. A major focus is the development of computational skills, preparing the student for CSCI 5832 (Natural Language Processing). Previous completion of LING 1200 or CSCI 1300 highly recommended. Topics include:
• methods of corpus analysis
• corpus design and annotation
• corpus-based search tools
• the UNIX operating system
• UNIX tools for language analysis
• Intermediate Python programming
• Natural Language Tool Kit

LING 4420: Morphology and Syntax
Instructor: Hannah Haynie

This course provides a general introduction to the linguistic subfields of morphology and syntax. Our focus is thus on the principles of word formation (morphology) and the structures used to construct larger utterances (syntax). Over the semester we will develop skills for analyzing and describing the morphological and syntactic characteristics of grammar and will explore how these phenomena vary in the world’s languages.

LING 4622: Statistical Analysis for Linguistics
Instructor: Hannah Haynie

This course aims to acquaint students with the fundamentals of quantitative analysis in linguistics and provide a practical introduction to the R statistical computing environment. It is suitable for students with no prior experience with statistics or statistical software packages. 

Primary aims include providing a basic introduction to statistics and practical experience with analytical techniques in common use in linguistics. Topics that will be covered include examining and manipulating data, tests for independence, regression modeling, mixed models, and data visualization. Along the way, the course will develop skills for handling and analyzing data in the R statistical computing environment. By the end of the course, students should be comfortable working with data in R, conducting several types of statistical analysis used in linguistics, and creating figures to visualize analytical results. Satisfies QRMS requirement.

LING 4620: Teaching Second Language Oral Skills
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

This course explores pedagogical approaches for developing second language oral skills in English. We consider the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching the macroskills - listening and speaking - as well as related microskills, such as pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Pedagogical concepts are situated against the backdrop of various teaching contexts for learners with a range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Praxis occurs through lesson development and analysis and interactions with language learners in the community. The culminating project of the course is the design of open acceses curricular units that incorporate social justice themes into lessons that target second language oral skills.

LING 4630: SLA and TESOL Principles and Practices
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

This course is an introduction to the Principles and Practices of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) field. The course provides students who are prospective, new, and/or experienced teachers of additional languages with a current overview of the field of TESOL and opportunities to build and expand pedagogical knowledge of strategies for language teaching and learning. While the course is aimed primarily at the teaching and learning of English, the course is also generally applicable to the teaching and learning of any additional languages. We will read about, observe, and analyze methods and materials for teaching vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, pronunciation and writing. Languages other than English may be used for some modeling and demonstration purposes. Methods and materials are related to language teaching principles, educational trends, global and local contexts, and linguistic considerations.

LING 5300: Language and Mind
Instructor: Bhuvana Narasimhan

Does the language we speak influence how we think? Some people believe that this position–the linguistic relativity hypothesis–is "wrong, all wrong" (Pinker 1994). For many researchers, language is just a tool for expressing concepts that all humans largely share. Others are convinced that our thoughts are deeply influenced by the language we speak, influencing how we perceive, categorize, remember, and reason about the world.

In this course we will evaluate empirical research that supports or refutes the linguistic relativity hypothesis in different conceptual domains, such as color, space, motion, objects, and time. Some questions we will ask are: Do the color distinctions encoded in our language influence how we categorize color? Does our writing system influence how we conceptualize time? Do children have universal concepts before they learn language? Do bilinguals classify events in different ways depending on the language they are using?

We will discuss different theories about the relationship between language and cognition during weekly discussions, and you will learn to run your own experiments to test different versions of the linguistic relativity.

LING 5800: Language Discrimination in Social Interaction
Instructor: Chase Raymond

This research-focused seminar will center around a newly created, online corpus of interactional data, called the Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction (CLDI). The CLDI includes naturally-occurring footage of individuals being harassed in some way for the language they are speaking (e.g., folks speaking Spanish together while at a store or restaurant in the U.S.). Such interactions constitute concrete instances of a particular genre of ‘language policing’ in public social life, which students in this course will explore by conceiving and conducting their own semester-length research projects using the data in the CLDI. We will meet in-person on Tuesdays, and via Zoom (synchronously) on Thursdays. Course counts as an elective for the CLASP program. 

LING 5420: Morphology and Syntax
Instructor: Andy Cowell

This course will cover the basics of morphology and syntax across the world's languages. It does not assume previous knowledge of the topic, but will be both wide-ranging and in-depth. We will use examples from many different languages, and use a few specific languages that the instructor is most familiar with to explore certain questions in greater detail. The course will cover typological perspectives and theories. We will also devote some time to thinking about best practices in analyzing and labeling morphology and syntax, and some of the database/corpus/computational challenges presented by language diversity. The final project will be an in-depth analysis/report on a language of your choice, from among lesser-known languages (i.e. not English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic or Hindi for example), based on published resources.

LING 5620: Teaching Second Language Oral Skills
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

This course explores pedagogical approaches for developing second language oral skills in English. We consider the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching the macroskills - listening and speaking - as well as related microskills, such as pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Pedagogical concepts are situated against the backdrop of various teaching contexts for learners with a range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Praxis occurs through lesson development and analysis and interactions with language learners in the community. The culminating project of the course is the design of open acceses curricular units that incorporate social justice themes into lessons that target second language oral skills.

LING 5622: Statistical Analysis for Linguistics
Instructor: Hannah Haynie

This course aims to acquaint students with the fundamentals of quantitative analysis in linguistics and provide a practical introduction to the R statistical computing environment. It is suitable for students with no prior experience with statistics or statistical software packages. 

Primary aims include providing a basic introduction to statistics and practical experience with analytical techniques in common use in linguistics. Topics that will be covered include examining and manipulating data, tests for independence, regression modeling, mixed models, and data visualization. Along the way, the course will develop skills for handling and analyzing data in the R statistical computing environment. By the end of the course, students should be comfortable working with data in R, conducting several types of statistical analysis used in linguistics, and creating figures to visualize analytical results. Satisfies QRMS requirement.

LING 5630: SLA and TESOL Principles and Practices
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

This course is an introduction to the Principles and Practices of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) field. The course provides students who are prospective, new, and/or experienced teachers of additional languages with a current overview of the field of TESOL and opportunities to build and expand pedagogical knowledge of strategies for language teaching and learning. While the course is aimed primarily at the teaching and learning of English, the course is also generally applicable to the teaching and learning of any additional languages. We will read about, observe, and analyze methods and materials for teaching vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, pronunciation and writing. Languages other than English may be used for some modeling and demonstration purposes. Methods and materials are related to language teaching principles, educational trends, global and local contexts, and linguistic considerations.

LING 7430: The Syntax and Semantics of Idioms
Instructor: Laura Michaelis 

Meanings are assembled in various ways in a construction-based grammar, and this array can be represented as a gradient of lexical fixity. At the leftmost, or ‘fixed’, extreme of this continuum are frozen idioms, both syntactically regular (the salt of the earth) and irregular (in the know). At the rightmost, or ‘open’ end of this continuum are fully productive patterns, like the Subject-Predicate construction. In between is everything else! In this class we will ask whether we can represent the wide range of complex expressions in a uniform way, while capturing all of the facts of form and function, from prosody to use. We will find a broad class of idiomatic expressions that we as a class can use as a test case. Is a lexical, phrasal or combined approach indicated? We will jointly construct a publishable case study of the phenomenon in which we challenge the field to reckon with an unexplored aspect of idiomaticity.

Summer 2021

MAY 10-27

LING 1000: Language in US Society
Instructor: Olivia Marrese

Humans use language in almost everything that we do, from situations as ordinary as a conversation with friends about weekend plans, to less-ordinary situations such a presidential debate. And yet, rarely do we critically examine our language use, particularly as it relates to identity and social norms. This course provides an opportunity to explore language use in the United States from a social, interdisciplinary perspective. The course will begin with a foundational introduction to sociolinguistic study, as we explore topics including regional and dialectal variation; prescriptivism and descriptivism; accents, jargon and slang; registers, style, and code-switching; and a variety of ideologies about how language should- or should not- be used in the United States. We will then explore language use through particular themes and institutional contexts, such as language and race/ethnicity, language and gender, language and the law, language and education, language and politics, and language and media. Throughout the course, we will draw on a variety of linguistic data to analyze the current landscape of language use in the United States. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own personal experiences with regard to each of these topics as we proceed through the course. 

LING 4630: SLA and TESOL Principles and Practices
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

This course is an introduction to the Principles and Practices of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) field. The course provides students who are prospective, new, and/or experienced teachers of additional languages with a current overview of the field of TESOL and opportunities to build and expand pedagogical knowledge of strategies for language teaching and learning. While the course is aimed primarily at the teaching and learning of English, the course is also generally applicable to the teaching and learning of any additional languages. We will read about, observe, and analyze methods and materials for teaching vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, pronunciation and writing. Languages other than English may be used for some modeling and demonstration purposes. Methods and materials are related to language teaching principles, educational trends, global and local contexts, and linguistic considerations.

JUNE 1 - JULY 2

LING 3545: World Language Policies
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

World Language Policies provides an introduction to language rights, language policies, and language planning from a national and international perspective. The course will cover areas such as the legal status of languages and language rights; the interrelations between globalization, nationalism, ethnicity, identity and language policy; linguistic ecology; multilingualism as a problem or resource as well as issues on language minoritization and endangerment. We will examine a number of case studies of language policy implementation, both historical and current, through the lens of different theoretical frameworks.

CONTINUING EDUCATION COURSES

LING 1000-581: Language in U.S. Society
Instructor: Kate Arnold-Murray

Humans use language as part of almost everything we do in social life. Whether it’s an everyday activity such as chit-chatting with a friend or family member over dinner, or something as globally significant as a presidential election or UN Summit, language provides us with many of the tools we use to make it happen. And yet, despite the fact that we live our lives through language (or perhaps because of that fact), most of us rarely take the time to critically examine its influence on us, nor our influence on it. This course provides an occasion for this sort of critical thinking by offering an introduction to language in U.S. society. As such, our aims are as much sociological as they are linguistic.

We will begin with some foundational topics, including language acquisition, regional and dialectal variation, register and style (including shifting between them), prescriptivism and descriptivism, and some pervasive ideologies about the nature of language and how language ‘should’ be. We will then explore the relationship between language and some specific social phenomena and institutions, taking as cases-in-point race/ethnicity, Deaf/Hearing communication, criminal justice systems, politics, and various forms of media. Next, we discuss language in everyday interaction—specifically how, in and through our use of language, we consistently go about categorizing, labeling, and evaluating the world, and how we use language in our everyday lives to construct our identities and build relationships. We then conclude by exploring a few phenomena in which we see some interesting similarities as we compare language use in the U.S. with language use across the globe. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own personal experiences with regard to each of these topics as we proceed through the course.

This course is approved for the following campus requirements:

  • A&S Core: United States Context
  • A&S Core: Contemporary Societies
  • Arts & Sciences General Education: Distribution-Social Sciences
  • Arts & Sciences General Education: Diversity-U.S. Perspective
  • MAPS: Social Science

LING 1020: Languages of the World 
Instructor: Marielle Butters

There are more than 7000 languages (as per The Ethnologue) spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a large part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization and discuss what sort of work linguistic fieldworkers do.

 

LING 3185: Figurative Language
Instructor: Rebecca Lee

Metaphor is part of our basic ability to understand the abstract in terms of the concrete.  We will learn how to analyze the metaphorical systems that we use to reason about abstract phenomena like emotion, conflict, purpose, relationships, power, causation, time, life, and ideation. We will use this framework to understand how new word meanings develop, how meaning is grounded in everyday experience, and how figurative language is used to portray complex concepts and social phenomena from different ideological viewpoints and perspectives. Fulfills course credit for the Language and Cognition major track. Fullfulls Arts & Humanities Gen-Ed Distribution Requirement.

 

Spring 2021

 

On this page:

LING 1000: Language in US Society

Instructor: Chase Raymond

Humans use language as part of almost everything we do in social life. Whether it’s an activity as mundane as chit-chatting with a friend or family member over dinner, or something as globally significant as a presidential debate or UN Summit, language provides us with the tools to make it happen. And yet, despite the fact that we live our lives through language (or perhaps because of that fact), most of us rarely take the time to critically examine its influence on us, nor our influence on it. This course provides an occasion for this sort of critical thinking by offering an introduction to language in U.S. society. As such, our aims are as much sociological as they are linguistic. 

We will begin with some foundational topics, including regional and dialectal variation, register and style (including shifting between them), prescriptivism and descriptivism, and some pervasive ideologies about the nature of language and how language ‘should’ be. We will then explore the relationship between language and some specific social phenomena and institutions, taking as cases-in-point race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, politics, various forms of media, and the criminal justice system. In our final unit, we’ll discuss language and normativity—specifically how, in and through our use of language, we consistently go about categorizing, labeling, and evaluating the world, thus re-creating what’s ‘normal’ vs. ‘abnormal’, ‘acceptable’ vs. ‘unacceptable’, ‘right’ vs. ‘wrong’, and so on. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own personal experiences with regard to each of these topics as we proceed through the course. 

This course can be applied toward fulfillment of either the Arts & Sciences Distribution Requirement (for Social Science), or the Arts & Sciences Diversity Requirement (for U.S. Perspective).

LING 1010: The Study of Words [Continuing Education remote evening course taught 2/5/21-4/30/21]

Instructor: Jared Desjardins

Do you want to increase the impact of your writing or speech? Do you want to improve your verbal score on graduate exams like the GRE? Do you want to understand the technical words in your field? Do you wonder why our Anglo-Saxon language owes so much to an extinct Italian empire? Do you want to know where we got that strange word syllabus? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, LING/CLAS 1010 might be for you.

English is a Germanic language, but about 60% of its words come from Latin or Greek. In this class, we will trace these words back to their origins by breaking them down into their component parts. We will use word histories to investigate how and why word meanings change—whether through changes in cultural institutions and values, as the result of cultural contact, or via the human imaginative capacity. At a practical level, you will increase the number of hard words that you can use appropriately in writing and conversation, and learn to figure out the meanings of hard words that you have never seen before. 

Your grade will be based on your scores on 8 problem sets, 7 online quizzes, 2 tests and an online final exam. You need only one concise text and its associated workbook: English Words from Latin & Greek Elements, Ayers, Worthen & Cherry (University of Arizona Press). The course is fun, doable and teaches a skill of lifelong value. You’ll never think about words quite the same way again.

LING 1020: Languages of the World
Instructor: Aous Mansouri

There are more than 7000 languages spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world’s languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a great part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization.

LING 1020: Languages of the World [Continuing Education online class 1/19/21-3/5/21]

Instructor: Marielle Butters

There are more than 7000 languages spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world’s languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a great part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization.

LING 2400: Language, Gender, and Sexuality
Instructor: Jeremy Calder

This course serves as an undergraduate introduction to the study of language, gender, and sexuality. We explore how the use of language both reflects and constructs differences in identities related to gender and sexual orientation. How do speakers use language to signal gender differences, and what are the social implications of the use of different gendered linguistic varieties? How does speaking in a particular way contribute to the construction of stereotypes related to queerness and sexual identity? How is language used in the expression of desire? What are the social consequences of speaking in a socially stigmatized way that doesn’t conform with normative gender ideals? We will view gendered linguistic stereotypes with a critical eye, and explore the roles of language varieties in contributing to conceptualizations of gender and sexual identity.

LING 3100: Language Sound Structures
Instructor: Lecturer

This course is about sounds in language, introducing the areas of linguistic study called phonetics and phonology.  We will consider such fundamental questions as: 

  • What are the sounds that people use in languages? 
  • How do we produce those sounds? 
  • What are the physical properties of those sounds? 
  • How are these sounds used in human languages? 

Along the way, we will acquire practical skills in perceiving and transcribing speech sounds, and we will learn some basic analytical techniques that enable us to address these (and other) questions.

LING 3185: Figurative Language

Instructor: Rebecca Lee

Metaphor is a major tool of literary creativity, as in passages like this by the poet Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a wood, 

and I—  I took the one less traveled by,  

And that has made all the difference.

We know that Frost is talking about something other than walking through the forest. He’s talking about the choices we make in life. But how do we know that? In this class, we will learn that poetic metaphor is actually a special use of our basic ability to form analogies, and understand abstractions in terms of concrete entities, properties and actions. This ability is manifested in many aspects of language and communication -- from our everyday conversations to political discourse to scientific explanation. It also plays a major role in our reasoning and understanding of everything from social life to properties of the natural world. In this class, we will learn how to detect metaphorical expressions in language and analyze the metaphorical systems that constitute much of our understanding of abstract phenomena like emotion, conflict, purpose, relationships, power, causation, time, life, communication and thinking.  We will also learn to distinguish metaphor from other common types of figurative language that work alongside it, like metonymy, hyperbole and irony. We will use this framework to understand how new word meanings develop and how meaning is grounded in embodied experience.  

LING 3430: Semantics

Instructor: Bhuvana Narasimhan

In this course we will explore how we use language to convey meaning. This enterprise raises a number of interesting questions: What are the kinds of meanings conveyed by the lexical and grammatical devices available in a language? Do languages differ in how they convey meaning? How much does context contribute to our understanding of meaning? What methods can we use to study meaning? We will investigate these and a range of other issues in semantics and pragmatics, focusing on both data and theory.

LING 3550: Talk at Work: Language Use in Institutional Contexts
Instructor: Chase Raymond

This course provides an overview of language use in various workplace settings, with an emphasis on hands-on data analysis. While this may be done in myriad ways, in this class we will use the theories and methods of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics (CA/IL) to consider naturally-occurring language use a range of institutional contexts. Some of the audio-/videorecorded contexts we will draw upon include: 911 emergency calls, doctor-patient consultations, news interviews, customer-service encounters, classroom discourse, and courtroom interaction. After considering what makes these occasions of language use distinct from so-called ‘ordinary’ or ‘mundane’ talk (such as chit-chatting with a friend at dinner), our focus will be on how specific language practices can affect and even constitute these social institutions’ processes, objectives, and outcomes. Given the important role that language demonstrably plays in these institutional settings, we will also spend some time addressing language-based inequalities in such contexts, as well as some of the laws and policies that govern language in the workplace. 

As opposed to a lecture-only class, this course is designed to be as ‘hands-on’ as possible. That is, students will be expected to take what we learn in lecture and in the readings, and apply that knowledge to novel data they haven’t seen before. As such, ample time will be devoted to data-focused activities.

LING 4420: Morphology and Syntax
Instructor: Hannah Haynie

This course provides a general introduction to the linguistic subfields of morphology and syntax. Our general focus is thus on the principles of word formation (morphology) and the structures used to construct larger utterances (syntax). Over the semester we will develop skills for analyzing and describing the morphological and syntactic characteristics of grammar and will explore how these phenomena vary in the world’s languages.

LING 4610: English Structure for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages ​
Instructor: Rai Farrelly

This course aims to establish a firm grounding in English grammar in order to analyze sentences, identify constituents, understand the logic of English grammar, and explain why some constructions are considered grammatically unacceptable. The pedagogical focus integrates grammatical form, meaning, and use in the teaching of English grammar to speakers of other languages. Students will demonstrate their conceptualization of pedagogical grammar through a critique of existing instructional materials as well as through the design and implementation of original classroom-based activities for teaching grammar in a range of contexts.

LING 4800: Language and Culture
Instructor: Adam Hodges

In this course, we will examine language as a form of action through which social, cultural and political relations are constituted. We will cover several key ideas and topics studied by linguistic anthropologists, such as the impact of language on thought and reality, language as a form of social action, language and identity, the dialogic emergence of culture, language ideologies, and language varieties. We will also examine several case studies and ethnographies that focus on language practices within particular communities. By the end of the course, you will understand key ideas in the study of language and culture (e.g., ideology, dialogism, identity, and indexicality), gain a critical awareness of the role language plays in social, cultural and political interaction, and examine the potential of ethnography for informing analyses of language and discourse.

LING 6300: Talk at Work: Language Use in Institutional Contexts
Instructor: Chase Raymond

This course provides an overview of language use in various workplace settings, with an emphasis on hands-on data analysis. While this may be done in myriad ways, in this class we will use the theories and methods of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics (CA/IL) to consider naturally-occurring language use a range of institutional contexts. Some of the audio-/videorecorded contexts we will draw upon include: 911 emergency calls, doctor-patient consultations, news interviews, customer-service encounters, classroom discourse, and courtroom interaction. After considering what makes these occasions of language use distinct from so-called ‘ordinary’ or ‘mundane’ talk (such as chit-chatting with a friend at dinner), our focus will be on how specific language practices can affect and even constitute these social institutions’ processes, objectives, and outcomes. Given the important role that language demonstrably plays in these institutional settings, we will also spend some time addressing language-based inequalities in such contexts, as well as some of the laws and policies that govern language in the workplace. 

As opposed to a lecture-only class, this course is designed to be as ‘hands-on’ as possible. That is, students will be expected to take what we learn in lecture and in the readings, and apply that knowledge to novel data they haven’t seen before. As such, ample time will be devoted to data-focused activities, and graduate students will produce a piece of novel research on institutional discourse.

LING 6450: Syntactic Analysis
Instructor: Laura Michaelis

This course introduces the tools that formal theories of syntax use to represent the connection between meaning and grammatical patterns at every level—from the noun phrase to the clause to the complex sentence. We will focus on the following aspects of the form-meaning connection: the relationship between verb meaning and verb morphosyntax, the relationship between semantic participant roles and grammatical relations, the relationship between semantic dependency and constituent structure and the relationship between discourse relations and syntactic relations. We will ask how various models meet the challenge of describing free word-order languages, and idiomatic patterns in various languages. The emphasis throughout the course will be on the following big questions:

  • How much hierarchical structure do we need in syntax, if any?
  • What's a head?
  • How do we determine whether a group of words is a constituent?
  • Why assume that syntax and semantics are two separate levels in grammar?
  • Is grammar a set of abstract principles or is it instead a set of constructions?
  • How is the meaning of a complex expression determined?
  • How are idiomatic and regular patterns interleaved in syntax?
  • Are grammatical functions like subject universal?
  • Are there languages that have no syntax?
  • Is syntax adapted to our communicative needs?
  • Can we find traces of grammar evolution in our current grammar?

We will begin by studying the intellectual environment that led up to the development of generative syntax in the 1950s, including the study of formal languages in computer science. We will then study the workings of transformational-generative syntax, the arguments that linguists have made against its central guiding assumption—the autonomy of syntax—and alternative models that accord a central place to the symbolic and communicative functions of syntax. We will learn about several such theories, including Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, which uses signs (modeled as feature structures) to capture generalizations previously taken as evidence for hierarchical syntactic structure and syntactic transformations. We will use this model to study anaphoric reference and properties of grammatical types like auxiliary verb. 

Your grade in this class will be based on your performance on 10 problems sets assigned throughout the semester. Each problem set consists of 3-4 questions. These questions ask you to describe generalizations in small data sets using appropriate tools of syntactic representation (like tree diagrams and attribute-value matrices). The required text is Levine, Syntactic Analysis: An HPSG-based Approach.​

LING 7100: Field Methods
Instructor: Andrew Cowell

This course introduces students to how to do linguistic documentation and field research. It covers basic methodologies for eliciting data and recording natural discourse, for analyzing a language correctly and efficiently based on such data, for creating metadata, for labeling data in cross-linguistically useful ways (both for typologists and corpus/computational approaches), and for archiving, sharing and analyzing the data using common field and lab tools such as FLEx, ELAN, Praat, and xml. Also discussed will be sharing data with local communities.

Fall 2020

LING 1000: Language in US Society
Instructor: Chase Raymond

Humans use language as part of almost everything we do in social life. Whether it’s an activity as mundane as chit-chatting with a friend or family member over dinner, or something as globally significant as a presidential debate or UN Summit, language provides us with the tools to make it happen. And yet, despite the fact that we live our lives through language (or perhaps because of that fact), most of us rarely take the time to critically examine its influence on us, nor our influence on it. This course provides an occasion for this sort of critical thinking by offering an introduction to language in U.S. society. As such, our aims are as much sociological as they are linguistic. 

We will begin with some foundational topics, including regional and dialectal variation, register and style (including shifting between them), prescriptivism and descriptivism, and some pervasive ideologies about the nature of language and how language ‘should’ be. We will then explore the relationship between language and some specific social phenomena and institutions, taking as cases-in-point race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, politics, various forms of media, and the criminal justice system. In our final unit, we’ll discuss language and normativity—specifically how, in and through our use of language, we consistently go about categorizing, labeling, and evaluating the world, thus re-creating what’s ‘normal’ vs. ‘abnormal’, ‘acceptable’ vs. ‘unacceptable’, ‘right’ vs. ‘wrong’, and so on. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own personal experiences with regard to each of these topics as we proceed through the course. 

This course can be applied toward fulfillment of either the Arts & Sciences Distribution Requirement (for Social Science), or the Arts & Sciences Diversity Requirement (for U.S. Perspective).

LING 1020: Languages of the World
Instructor: Andrew Cowell [Note: Prof. Cowell is teaching both lecture sections of LING 1020 offered this fall.]

This course offers a general introduction to the world's languages. It covers topics such as the origins of language, the origins of individual languages and language families, and the relationships between the world's languages (did you know that English is related to Hindi?). It provides a brief introduction to the major languages and language groups of the world, and the interesting features of these languages, many of which are radically different from English. It also discusses the processes of historical change in languages, the origins and development of writing systems, and the ways that certain languages have spread around the world and the reasons why, as well as the fact that many smaller languages are now endangered. Finally, we'll also look some at artificial languages (Klingon, Esperanto, Lord of the Rings), and the future of the world's languages.

LING 2000: Introduction to Linguistics
Instructor: Jill Duffield

What is language? What features are constant across linguistic systems? What features vary? Do these features define language as unique to humans? 

In this course you will gain a general understanding of the principles of the organization of language and the methods of linguistic inquiry, focusing on five major areas of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax. We will explore the physiology of speech production, the systematic organization of sounds in a language and how the streams of sound are divided into meaningful parts. We will look at how meaning is encoded in words and parts of words, and how combinations of words form larger structures in sentences and in discourse. Throughout the course, we will discuss the application of the material to topics in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, historical linguistics, and language acquisition. By the end of this course, you should be able to: analyze language data and identify linguistic structures, even in languages you do not speak; understand the difference between what language users think they do and what they actually do with language; and discuss language and language-related topics in ways that are both technically precise and accessible to the linguist and non-linguist alike.

LING 2500: Race, Ethnicity, and Language
Instructor: Jeremy Calder

This course serves as an undergraduate introduction to the study of race, ethnicity, and language. We explore the ways that speakers of different racial and ethnic groups use language differently, as well as the social implications of the use of different racialized linguistic varieties. How does speaking a racialized variety contribute to the construction of stereotypes and ideas of race and ethnicity more broadly? What are the social consequences of speaking in a racialized way, e.g. in matters of education, the media, access to capital, and the law? 

LING 3100: Language Sound Structures
Instructor: Anna Clark

This is a course about sounds in language, introducing the areas of linguistic study called phonetics and phonology. We will consider such fundamental questions as: What are the sounds that people use in languages? How do we produce those sounds? What are the physical properties of those sounds? How are these sounds used in human languages? Along the way, we will acquire practical skills in perceiving and transcribing speech sounds, and we will learn some basic analytical techniques that enable us to address these (and other) questions.

LING 3545: World Language Policies
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly
Fall Delivery Mode: Hybrid (In Person & Remote Synchronous Sessions), MWF 10:20-11:10 

World Language Policies provides an introduction to language rights, language policies, and language planning from a national and international perspective. The course will cover areas such as the legal status of languages and language rights; the interrelations between globalization, nationalism, ethnicity, identity and language policy; linguistic ecology; multilingualism as a problem or resource as well as issues on language minoritization and endangerment. We will examine a number of case studies of language policy implementation, both historical and current, through the lens of different theoretical frameworks.

Class Notes: This hybrid class will be taught using a combination of in person and remote instruction modes. Check your CU email and Canvas for finalized in-person and remote dates for this course. *Likely schedule will be in person on Mondays, remote during scheduled time Wednesday and Friday. Students will attend in person classes as indicated on the syllabus. The days students are not in person, they will participate synchronously at the designated class time through Zoom. Class sessions will be recorded so students who cannot attend in person or via Zoom at the scheduled class time can view the class session later (prior to the next class meeting). 

LING 3800-001: Language & Politics
Instructor: Adam Hodges

This course is for you if you are interested in either language or politics (broadly conceived) and would like to explore how the two intersect. No prior coursework in linguistics is required and you will be encouraged to build on insights from your major field of study, whether you are a linguistics major or non-major, as we explore how language shapes politics and how power figures into political discourse. We will examine how words become politically loaded, how metaphors shape understandings and policy responses, how political messages and disinformation propagate across speech events, and how politicians flout linguistic maxims to claim plausible deniability. We will critically analyze these and other topics with an emphasis on the US political context and the 2020 presidential election. By the end of the course, you will be able to identify how linguistic devices (e.g., metaphor) and discursive strategies (e.g., plausible deniability) are used in political discourse and analyze real-world issues or case studies using concepts from sociocultural linguistics. The course will provide you with an opportunity to hone your critical thinking and analytic skills as you make your own intellectually-informed contribution to an ongoing public debate or conversation of interest to you.

LING 3800-880: Language and Digital Media
HONORS COURSE
Instructor: Kira Hall

This upper division undergraduate honors seminar offers a sociocultural linguistic approach to what has come to be called ‘digital discourse’—the multimodal forms of interaction associated with technologies such as texting or instant messaging, blogging, photo and video sharing, mobile phones, gaming, and social networking sites. We will examine how digital communication technologies are inspiring new uses of language, facilitating the development of new kinds of communities, and changing the very contours of social interaction. Seminar students will conduct original sociolinguistic research that evaluates some aspect of language use on a digital platform of their choosing, or alternatively, a form of language that moves across digital platforms. As we move towards spending much more of our lives in virtual environments to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, this course is looking for an energetic and committed group of students who are interested in developing expertise in the social analytics of language online.

Prerequisite: A previous course in sociocultural linguistics (e.g., Ling 1000, Ling 2400, Ling 2500, Ling 3545, Ling 4700, Ling 4800) or consent of the instructor (kira.hall@colorado.edu)

LING 4100: Language and the Public Interest                        
Instructor: Zygmunt Frajzyngier

The purpose of the course is to examine what kind of linguistic means are used, consciously or unconsciously in persuasion. We will be looking at political, commercial, religious, social groups, artistic, administrative, and other public domains.  In this course,  we will examine linguistic means whose function in isolation have nothing to do with persuasion. No previous experience in linguistics is required. Each course unit will begin with a short introduction into linguistic phenomenon to be studied. Students are expected to gather instantiation of attempts at persuasion from newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, TV, radio, social media, political, religious, and social gatherings. We will focus on persuasion in English, but if students are competent in any other language, persuasion means in those languages will also be examined. The course should of interest to students in Linguistics, Political Science, Sociology, International Affairs, School of Business. This course provides an objective analysis of the means involved in persuasion and not an analysis of the efficiency of those means. Hence it is not a ‘how to’ course. Course requirements are active participation in classes and a term paper.

LING 4420: Morphology & Syntax
Instructor/Description pending

LING 4620: Teaching Second Language Oral Skills
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly
Fall Delivery Mode: Hybrid (In Person & Remote Synchronous Sessions), Thursdays 3:55-6:25

This course explores pedagogical approaches for developing second language oral skills in English. We consider the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching the macroskills - listening and speaking - as well as related microskills, such as pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Pedagogical concepts are situated against the backdrop of various teaching contexts for learners with a range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Praxis occurs through lesson development and analysis and interactions with language learners in the community. The culminating project of the course is the design of open acceses curricular units that incorporate social justice themes into lessons that target second language oral skills.

Class Notes: This hybrid class will be taught using a combination of in person and remote instruction modes. A survey of currently enrolled students for this course indicated that over 90% are not planning to attend face-to-face sessions; therefore, the majority of meetings will be remote. However, in person sessions will be part of the course as the content warrants: i.e., for demonstrations and presentations. Check your CU email and Canvas for finalized in-person and remote dates for this course. Class sessions will be recorded so students who cannot attend in person or via Zoom at the scheduled class time can view the class session later (prior to the next class meeting). 

LING 4630: SLA and TESOL Principles and Practices
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly
Fall Delivery Mode: Hybrid (In Person & Remote Synchronous Sessions), Tuesdays 3:55-6:25 

This course is an introduction to the Principles and Practices of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) field. The course provides students who are prospective, new, and/or experienced teachers of additional languages with a current overview of the field of TESOL and opportunities to build and expand pedagogical knowledge of strategies for language teaching and learning. While the course is aimed primarily at the teaching and learning of English, the course is also generally applicable to the teaching and learning of other languages as additional languages. We will read about, observe, describe, model, practice, analyze and discuss methods and materials for teaching vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, pronunciation and writing. Languages other than English may be used for some modeling and demonstration purposes. Methods and materials are related to language teaching principles, educational trends, global and local contexts, and linguistic considerations.

Class Notes: This hybrid class will be taught using a combination of in person and remote instruction modes. The course will likely alternate weekly between in person and remote synchronous sessions. The currently assigned classroom seats 10 with a course capacity of 30, therefore, you will be assigned a cohort with specific in person attendance dates. A recent survey of currently enrolled students indicates that 50% are planning to only attend remotely during the scheduled class time. Check your CU email and Canvas for finalized in-person and remote dates for this course. Class sessions will be recorded so students who cannot attend in person or via Zoom at the scheduled class time can view the class session later (prior to the next class meeting). 

LING 5030: Linguistic Phonetics
Instructor: Rebecca Scarborough

This course will give a practical and theoretical introduction to articulatory, acoustic, and auditory phonetics. We will be considering fundamental questions like:  How do we produce speech?  How do we perceive speech? What are the physical properties of the speech sounds we produce and perceive?  How does the nature of these processes influence the sound patterns of languages?

Along the way you will gain lots of practical skills as well. You will (i) Acquire skills to transcribe spoken language data in any language & interpret the transcriptions of others; (ii) Learn to generate and interpret acoustic analyses, including waveforms and spectrograms, and collect acoustic measurements from them; (iii) Learn to design and implement controlled phonetic experiments for linguistic hypothesis testing; (iv) Recognize phonetic variation in spoken language (contextual, dialectal, stylistic, idiosyncratic); (v) Understand basic principles of articulation and how they yield specific acoustic consequences.

LING 5200: Computational Corpus Linguistics
Instructor/Description pending

LING 5420: Morphology and Syntax
Instructor: Hannah Haynie

This course provides a general introduction to the principles of word formation (morphology) and sentence structure (syntax). We will investigate many word formation processes and syntactic structures found across the world’s languages, examining data from a diverse range of grammars along the way. This course will also explore the variation that exists in morphosyntax, investigating how languages use morphology and syntax differently and what sort of typological patterns we find as a result. Along the way we will build skills for analyzing word structure (including morphophonological processes and morphosyntactic patterns) and for understanding the structural relationships that allow us to build bigger units of meaning.

LING 5570: Introduction to Diachronics
Instructor: Hannah Haynie

This course presents an overview of diachronic linguistics, including data-oriented investigations of how languages change over time in their phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, and also discussion of how contact, culture, language-internal factors and other influences impact language change over time. In this course we will build skills including analysis of sound change, morphological change, grammaticalization, more general syntactic and semantic change, comparative and internal reconstruction, and subgrouping. We will also discuss theoretical questions in the context of current literature, asking questions such as: How and why does sound change occur? How is language change influenced by the social and geographical contexts in which it occurs? Why do some types of change occur frequently across the world’s languages? What happens when languages are in contact? How does language change impact the typological patterns we find in the world’s languages? How do computational models of language change reflect the principles of the Comparative Method? and Is it possible to uncover information about more remote linguistic prehistory?

LING 5620: Teaching Second Language Oral Skills
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly
Fall Delivery Mode: Hybrid (In Person & Remote Synchronous Sessions), Thursdays 3:55-6:25 

This course explores pedagogical approaches for developing second language oral skills in English. We consider the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching the macroskills - listening and speaking - as well as related microskills, such as pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Pedagogical concepts are situated against the backdrop of various teaching contexts for learners with a range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Praxis occurs through lesson development and analysis and interactions with language learners in the community. The culminating project of the course is the design of open acceses curricular units that incorporate social justice themes into lessons that target second language oral skills.

Class Notes: This hybrid class will be taught using a combination of in person and remote instruction modes. A survey of currently enrolled students for this course indicated that over 90% are not planning to attend face-to-face sessions; therefore, the majority of meetings will be remote. However, in person sessions will be part of the course as the content warrants: i.e., for demonstrations and presentations. Check your CU email and Canvas for finalized in-person and remote dates for this course. Class sessions will be recorded so students who cannot attend in person or via Zoom at the scheduled class time can view the class session later (prior to the next class meeting). 

LING 5630: SLA and TESOL Principles and Practices
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly
Fall Delivery Mode: Hybrid (In Person & Remote Synchronous Sessions), Tuesdays 3:55-6:25 

This course is an introduction to the Principles and Practices of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) field. The course provides students who are prospective, new, and/or experienced teachers of additional languages with a current overview of the field of TESOL and opportunities to build and expand pedagogical knowledge of strategies for language teaching and learning. While the course is aimed primarily at the teaching and learning of English, the course is also generally applicable to the teaching and learning of other languages as additional languages. We will read about, observe, describe, model, practice, analyze and discuss methods and materials for teaching vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, pronunciation and writing. Languages other than English may be used for some modeling and demonstration purposes. Methods and materials are related to language teaching principles, educational trends, global and local contexts, and linguistic considerations.

Class Notes: This hybrid class will be taught using a combination of in person and remote instruction modes. The course will likely alternate weekly between in person and remote synchronous sessions. The currently assigned classroom seats 10 with a course capacity of 30, therefore, you will be assigned a cohort with specific in person attendance dates. A recent survey of currently enrolled students indicates that 50% are planning to only attend remotely during the scheduled class time. Check your CU email and Canvas for finalized in-person and remote dates for this course. Class sessions will be recorded so students who cannot attend in person or via Zoom at the scheduled class time can view the class session later (prior to the next class meeting). 

LING 5832: Natural Language Processing
Instructor: K Kann / Description pending

LING 6310: Sociolinguistic Analysis
Instructor: Jeremy Calder

This course serves as a graduate-level introduction to the study of sociolinguistic variation. We explore language variation and its social implications, and how differences in language use connect with larger ideological categories such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and locality. This course explores sociolinguistics from a quantitative variationist point of view, providing both the theoretical background and methodological skills to conduct quantitative sociophonetic research and interrogate developments in the field of sociolinguistic variation.

LING 7800: Tense & Aspect
Instructor: Laura Michaelis

Aspectual meaning concerns the presence or absence of change within an interval of interest, commonly known as reference time. Tense concerns the location of the reference time relative to speech time. The two kinds of temporal relations are generally treated as separate components of verb meaning, there are indicators that the two systems interact in important ways. For example, in English events and processes cannot ordinarily be reported as ‘ongoing right now’ by means of the simple present tense: *Listen! Your phone rings! In this seminar, we will explore the following questions:

  • How are temporal relations related to states of the world (or possible worlds)?
  • What is our account of parasitic constructions, like participles, that express temporal relations only relative to an already established reference time?
  • How do expressions of tense and aspect behave when embedded as complements of modals verbs, reporting verbs, belief verbs?
  • How are temporal constructions deployed in the creation of narrative sequences, including news stories?
  • How do aspectual constructions develop and change over time and how does the division of semiotic labor change over time? 
  • How do constructions, including tense constructions, select for aspectual categories?
  • How is aspectual meaning related to the meanings of idioms?
  • What role does aspect play in the representation of verb meaning?
  • What is the difference between situation types (i.e, Aktionsart) and grammatical aspect?
  • Is perfective aspect in, say, French the same thing as perfective aspect in, say, Russian?
  • Does the event type of a verb tell us anything about that verb's syntactic behavior?
  • How does one construct arguments about what a form means?
  • How do logic-based approaches to meaning incorporate tense, aspect and modality?

In the first half of the course we will look closely at event-based categorization and a series of diagnostics used to distinguish aspectual categories. In the second half we will focus on the relationship between aspectual representation and verb morphosyntax. Participants will present readings (sometimes of my choosing and sometimes of their own choosing). Participants will learn ways to construct papers and arguments through careful analysis of readings. Your grade in the course will be based on your presentation and a data-based term paper in which you apply diagnostics and tools of aspectual theory to a data set of your choice. 

If you are an MA student and would like to take the course, please contact Prof. Michaelis to determine whether this course would be a good choice for you. But MA students have thrived in this seminar in the past.

LING 7800: Computational Lexical Semantics
Instructor: Martha Palmer / Description pending

 

Summer 2020

Maymester (May 11-29)

LING 1000: Language in U.S. Society
Instructor: Maureen Kosse

Contrary to the saying, talk is never cheap. Language is, paradoxically, both a mundane and powerful force in structuring our social lives. The way we speak is infused with social meaning – every moment of talk conveys something about who a speaker is, where they are from, or how they feel about what they say. The analysis of language provides profound insights into cultures, identities, and human interaction more broadly. We will begin with a brief introduction to the field of linguistics, focusing on the units of measurement used in sociocultural linguistics to discuss dialectal variation in the US. We will discuss language myths and language ideologies, which influence our perception of languages and their speakers. Then, we will move into how language is used to accomplish social action (ie. performativity). After establishing this theoretical foundation, we will examine how these theories may elucidate issues pertaining to race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, politeness, the US “culture wars,” and the role and influence of media as it concerns language. Most importantly, this course seeks to challenge common misunderstandings of language in the U.S. This course seeks to facilitate a deeper understanding of language and culture in order to identify and confront language myths/misconceptions.

I will hold lectures live online, but record them at the same time so they can be downloaded and reviewed as necessary (either in podcast form or as an entire video). Students are welcome to watch and ask questions during the live portion; I will also hold office hours by video chat. This way, students can participate as synchronously or asynchronously as they like. Once a week, we will have a discussion instead of a lecture. We can decide as a class on which day that might be, but virtual attendance will be required (I am also open to splitting this into sections like a recitation). 

LING 3630/LING 5630: SLA and TESOL Principles and Practices
Instructor: Raichle Farrelly

If you are interested in a summer course for your major or as a graduate level LING elective, LING 3630/5630 – Principles and Practices in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) will be taught in Maymester (May 11 to 29; see below for information on the plan for remote learning).  This course provides students who are prospective, new, and/or experienced teachers of additional languages with a current overview of the field of TESOL and opportunities to build and expand pedagogical knowledge of strategies for language teaching and learning. While the course is aimed primarily at the teaching and learning of English, the course is also generally applicable to the teaching and learning of other languages as additional languages.

We will read about, observe, describe, model, practice, analyze and discuss methods and materials for teaching vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, pronunciation and writing. Languages other than English may be used for some modeling and demonstration purposes. Methods and materials are related to language teaching principles, educational trends, global and local contexts, and linguistic considerations.

While originally planned as a face-to-face course, this May (due to COVID-19) LING 3630/5630 will be taught online by Dr. Rai Farrelly. Course content will be delivered using both synchronous and asynchronous learning models. This course counts as an upper division LING elective toward the LING major and as a graduate LING elective. LING 3630 is also a required course for students currently enrolled in the TESOL certificate as well as those interested in the new TESOL minor or the TESOL track within the Linguistics major -- both available starting this fall. LING 5630 is required for the new Graduate Certificate in TESOL. Summer registration is open so, if you are interested, enroll now!

Tentative Plan for Remote Learning

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday/Sunday

Synchronous via Zoom

9a-12p

Asynchronous via Canvas (discussion, readings, videos, assignments)

Synchronous via Zoom

9a-12p

Asynchronous via Canvas (discussion, readings, videos, assignments)

Synchronous via Zoom

9a-12p

Readings & Response to Readings

Spring 2020

LING 1200
Programming for Linguists
GPTI

This class presents techniques for computer programming in high level programming languages such as Python to address a range of problems with a specific focus on language processing and linguistics. The class is suitable for students with little to no prior experience in computing or programming.

This course covers the fundamentals of programming using the programming language Python. After the course, students should be familiar with variables, data types, control structures, reading and writing files, functions, and basic data structures. The focus is on program development for natural language processing and computational linguistics. Students will become familiar with programming and using third-party libraries to accomplish fundamental tasks in computing.

LING 4100
Talk at Work: Language Use in Institutional Contexts
Prof. Chase Raymond

This course provides an overview of language use in various workplace settings, with an emphasis on hands-on data analysis. We will consider audio-/video-recordings of a range of institutional contexts--including 911 emergency calls, doctor-patient consultations, news interviews, customer-service encounters, classroom discourse, and courtroom interaction--and discuss what makes these occasions of language use distinct from so-called 'ordinary' or 'mundane' talk (such as chit-chatting with a friend at dinner). Moreover, we will ask how specific language practices affect these social institutions' processes, objectives, and outcomes. Accordingly, we will spend time addressing language-based inequalities in such contexts, as well as some of the laws and policies that govern language in the workplace. 

LING 4100
Single Generation Languages
Prof. Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Single generation languages are languages of adult speakers that are not transmitted from parents to children. Typically, these speakers are immigrants. The local populations refer to those languages as ‘broken’ languages, e.g. ‘broken English’. These languages are not pidgins. For our course we will be working with immigrants who have never had any formal instruction in English. We will discover the structure of these languages and the meanings encoded in their grammars. The importance of these languages is that they provide a testing ground for several linguistic theories and for the relationship between lexicon, syntax, and semantics. The most important outcome for us will be discovering how meanings emerge in grammatical structure. The course provides hands-on instruction, in that every student will be working on a single generation language of their choice. I will be sharing with class our (Frajzyngier, Gurian, Karpenko) Grammar of Sino-Russian idiolects (in progress). Participants in the course will be working in groups, preferably composed of graduate and undergraduate students. Each group will be required to write a mini-grammar of a single generation language.

If you are interested in the course, feel free to email me or call me (303-492-6959). If you are interested in the course, you may want to start looking around for speakers who meet the single generation language criteria.

LING 4100
Statistical Analysis for Linguistics
Prof. Hannah Haynie

Knowledge of basic statistical concepts and principles, familiarity with commonly used analytical techniques, and practical skills for working with and analyzing data are important for being able to understand and contribute to research in several sub-fields of linguistics. This course aims to acquaint students with the fundamentals of quantitative analysis in linguistics and provide a practical introduction to the R statistical computing environment. It is suitable for students with no prior experience with statistics or statistical software packages.

This course provides a basic introduction to statistics, along with practical experience with analytical techniques in common use in linguistics. Topics that will be covered include examining and manipulating data, tests for independence, regression modeling, mixed models, techniques for assessing language relationships, and data visualization. Along the way, the course will develop skills for manipulating and analyzing data in the R statistical computing environment. By the end of the course, students should be comfortable working with data in R, conducting several types of statistical analysis used in linguistics, and creating figures to visualize analytical results.

LING 4100
Teaching Second Language Oral Skills
Dr. Raichle Farrelly

This course explores pedagogical approaches for developing nonnative speakers' oral English proficiency and communication skills. We explore the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching language macroskills - listening and speaking - as well as related microskills, including pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Pedagogical concepts are considered through the lens of various teaching contexts – domestic and abroad - for learners of all ages and backgrounds. Students will make theory-practice connections through lesson development and analysis, and interactions with language learners in the community.

LING 4610
English Structure for TESOL
Dr. Raichle Farrelly

This course aims to establish a firm grounding in English grammar in order to analyze sentences, identify constituents, understand the logic of English grammar, and explain why some constructions are considered grammatically unacceptable. The pedagogical focus integrates grammatical form, meaning, and use in the teaching of English grammar to speakers of other languages. Students will demonstrate their conceptualization of pedagogical grammar through a critique of existing instructional materials as well as through the design and implementation of original classroom-based activities for teaching grammar in a range of contexts.

LING 4700
Introduction to Conversation Analysis
Profs. Barbara Fox & Chase Raymond

Although everyday conversation is commonly conceived of as random and chaotic—overrun with false starts, hitches, pauses, misunderstandings, topic shifts, and the like—in reality conversation is the product of a highly systematic and organized machinery. This course aims to unpack some of the orderliness of this machinery by providing an introduction to the theory and method known as Conversation Analysis (CA). The majority of our time will be spent tackling several of the fundamental features of human social interaction—e.g., turn-taking, sequence and preference organization, repair, and epistemics—including cross-linguistic and cross-cultural considerations. After laying this foundation, we will also briefly introduce how CA theory and method can be brought to bear on interaction in institutional settings, as well as contribute to our understanding of the link between language and identity. Throughout our discussion, the empirical rigor of CA will be underscored, which we will argue offers a powerful lens through which to examine human sociality and engage in social theorizing. 

As opposed to a lecture-only class, this course is designed to be as ‘hands-on’ as possible. That is, students will be expected to take what we learn in lecture and in the readings, and apply that knowledge to novel data they haven’t seen before. As such, ample time will be devoted to data-focused activities.  

LING 4800
Language & Culture
Dr. Adam Hodges

In this course, we will examine language as a form of action through which social, cultural and political relations are constituted. We will cover several key ideas and topics studied by linguistic anthropologists, such as the impact of language on thought and reality, language as a form of social action, language and identity, the dialogic emergence of culture, language ideologies, and language varieties. We will also examine several case studies and ethnographies that focus on language practices within particular communities. By the end of the course, you will understand key ideas in the study of language and culture (e.g., ideology, dialogism, identity, and indexicality), gain a critical awareness of the role language plays in social, cultural and political interaction, and examine the potential of ethnography for informing analyses of language and discourse.

LING 4910
TESOL Practicum
Dr. Raichle Farrelly

The TESOL practicum provides a carefully mentored teaching experience to help novice teachers develop and enhance the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to enact effective instructional practices with English language learners. The TESOL practicum provides the opportunity for student teachers to theorize practice as they engage with language learners in the classroom alongside a cooperating teacher who serves as a model, mentor and source of critical feedback. Students will demonstrate their pedagogical and professional knowledge through reflections on classroom observations, instructional design elements (e.g., lesson plans), delivery of original activities in the classroom, and post-teaching reflections in writing, video and face-to-face consultations with the practicum supervisor. A culminating deliverable from this course is an online teaching portfolio comprising a teaching philosophy statement, a complete unit plan, reflections on teaching, and a narrative on professional responsibility. 

LING 5610
English Structure for TESOL
Dr. Raichle Farrelly

This course aims to establish a firm grounding in English grammar in order to analyze sentences, identify constituents, understand the logic of English grammar, and explain why some constructions are considered grammatically unacceptable. The pedagogical focus integrates grammatical form, meaning, and use in the teaching of English grammar to speakers of other languages. Students will demonstrate their conceptualization of pedagogical grammar through a critique of existing instructional materials as well as through the design and implementation of original classroom-based activities for teaching grammar in a range of contexts.

LING 5620
Teaching Second Language (L2) Oral Skills and Communication
Dr. Raichle Farrelly

This course explores pedagogical approaches for developing nonnative speakers' oral English proficiency and communication skills. We explore the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching language macroskills - listening and speaking - as well as related microskills, including pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Pedagogical concepts are considered through the lens of various teaching contexts – domestic and abroad - for learners of all ages and backgrounds. Students will make theory-practice connections through lesson development and analysis, and interactions with language learners in the community.

LING 5700
Introduction to Conversation Analysis
Profs. Barbara Fox & Chase Raymond

Although everyday conversation is commonly conceived of as random and chaotic—overrun with false starts, hitches, pauses, misunderstandings, topic shifts, and the like—in reality conversation is the product of a highly systematic and organized machinery. This course aims to unpack some of the orderliness of this machinery by providing an introduction to the theory and method known as Conversation Analysis (CA). The majority of our time will be spent tackling several of the fundamental features of human social interaction—e.g., turn-taking, sequence and preference organization, repair, and epistemics—including cross-linguistic and cross-cultural considerations. After laying this foundation, we will also briefly introduce how CA theory and method can be brought to bear on interaction in institutional settings, as well as contribute to our understanding of the link between language and identity. Throughout our discussion, the empirical rigor of CA will be underscored, which we will argue offers a powerful lens through which to examine human sociality and engage in social theorizing. 

As opposed to a lecture-only class, this course is designed to be as ‘hands-on’ as possible. That is, students will be expected to take what we learn in lecture and in the readings, and apply that knowledge to novel data they haven’t seen before. As such, ample time will be devoted to data-focused activities.  

LING 5800
Statistical Analysis for Linguistics
Prof. Hannah Haynie

Knowledge of basic statistical concepts and principles, familiarity with commonly used analytical techniques, and practical skills for working with and analyzing data are important for being able to understand and contribute to research in several sub-fields of linguistics. This course aims to acquaint students with the fundamentals of quantitative analysis in linguistics and provide a practical introduction to the R statistical computing environment. It is suitable for students with no prior experience with statistics or statistical software packages.

This course provides a basic introduction to statistics, along with practical experience with analytical techniques in common use in linguistics. Topics that will be covered include examining and manipulating data, tests for independence, regression modeling, mixed models, techniques for assessing language relationships, and data visualization. Along the way, the course will develop skills for manipulating and analyzing data in the R statistical computing environment. By the end of the course, students should be comfortable working with data in R, conducting several types of statistical analysis used in linguistics, and creating figures to visualize analytical results.

LING 5910
TESOL Practicum
Dr. Raichle Farrelly

The TESOL practicum provides a carefully mentored teaching experience to help novice teachers develop and enhance the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to enact effective instructional practices with English language learners. The TESOL practicum provides the opportunity for student teachers to theorize practice as they engage with language learners in the classroom alongside a cooperating teacher who serves as a model, mentor and source of critical feedback. Students will demonstrate their pedagogical and professional knowledge through reflections on classroom observations, instructional design elements (e.g., lesson plans), delivery of original activities in the classroom, and post-teaching reflections in writing, video and face-to-face consultations with the practicum supervisor. A culminating deliverable from this course is an online teaching portfolio comprising a teaching philosophy statement, a complete unit plan, reflections on teaching, and a narrative on professional responsibility. 

LING 6300
Single Generation Languages
Prof. Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Single generation languages are languages of adult speakers that are not transmitted from parents to children. Typically, those speakers are immigrants. The local populations refer to those languages as ‘broken’ languages, e.g. ‘broken English’. These languages are not pidgins. For our course we will be working with immigrants that never had any formal instruction in English. We will discover the structure of these languages and the meanings encoded in their grammars. The importance of these languages is that they provide a testing ground for several linguistic theories and for the relationship between lexicon, syntax, and semantics. The most important outcome for us will be discovering how meanings emerge in grammatical structure. The course is a hands on instruction in that every student will be working on a single generation language of their choice. I will be sharing with class our (Frajzyngier, Gurian, Karpenko) Grammar of Sino-Russian idiolects (in progress). Participants in the course will be working in groups, preferably composed of graduate and undergraduate students. Each group will be required to write a mini-grammar of a single generation language.

If you are interested in the course, feel free to email me or call me (303-492-6959). If you are interested in the course you may want to start looking around of speakers that meet the single generation language criteria.

LING 6300
Talk at Work: Language Use in Institutional Contexts
Prof. Chase Raymond

This course provides an overview of language use in various workplace settings, with an emphasis on hands-on data analysis. We will consider audio-/video-recordings of a range of institutional contexts--including 911 emergency calls, doctor-patient consultations, news interviews, customer-service encounters, classroom discourse, and courtroom interaction--and discuss what makes these occasions of language use distinct from so-called 'ordinary' or 'mundane' talk (such as chit-chatting with a friend at dinner). Moreover, we will ask how specific language practices affect these social institutions' processes, objectives, and outcomes. Accordingly, we will spend time addressing language-based inequalities in such contexts, as well as some of the laws and policies that govern language in the workplace. 

LING 7100
Field Methods
Prof. Zygmunt Frajzyngier

The purpose of the course is to learn methodologies and techniques involved in discovering the forms and functions encoded in the grammatical system of a given language through the study of the spoken language rather than through the study of written texts. Such a work by necessity involves the work with native speakers of the language.

Throughout the course the participants will be discovering and describing the fundamental elements of the language structure including the phonetic and phonological inventory, phonological rules, morphological structure, liner orders and functions and meanings encoded in the languge. 

Since the prerequisite for any description is a phonological analysis, we will start with phonetics and phonology. Once the fundamentals of the phonological system of the language have been mastered, we will be able to make accurate transcriptions throughout the course. Phonological, morphological, and syntactic analysis will proceed simultaneously.

The language we will be working on this Semester is Moba, spoken in North-West corner of Togo. Moba belongs to the Gur group of the Niger-Congo phylum. There exists one Ph.D. dissertation and a relatively large number of papers, translations, and teaching materials (see http://www.language-archives.org/language/mfq). Our language assistant will be Yenduboan Mingoub.

If you are interested in the course, feel free to email me or call me (303-492-6959). 

LING 7800
Constructional Morphology
Prof. Laura Michaelis

In syntactic theory, syntactic heads are the major mediators between syntax and semantics: the problem of describing the meaning of a complex expression is reduced to the problem of describing what classes of expressions the syntactic head can or must combine with (Zwicky 1995). In construction-based grammars, it is constructions (templates for word combination) rather than syntactic heads, that determine the possible combinations of expressions in a grammar (Croft 1996). All constructions, whether they license phrases, lexemes, complex words or multi-word expressions, select for specific classes of expressions--the allowable daughters of the construction. This means that within a phrasal unit either daughter may be a selector, whether or not it is a syntactic head. Therefore we need not, for example, regard a determiner as a syntactic head merely because it is a semantic selector--the nominal sister and determiner sister select one another (van Eynde 2006). In this class, we will explore semantic, syntactic and discourse-pragmatic consequences of constructional selectivity at the level of word formation, and ask how appropriately to represent that selectivity, as well as the semantic resolution procedures known as coercion effects (Jackendoff 1997, Michaelis 2004). We will examine how competitor forms may affect the particular complex word pattern adopted, as in the case of multiple exponence, e.g., the verb flavorize (vs.  denominal flavor). We will examine consequences of constructional selectivity in both inflectional and derivational patterns. We will focus on modeling data from English and Latin. Our particular interest will be in the consequences of adopting a realizational approach, and the question of how we avoid treating complex words as ‘syntax for morphemes’. Work expectations will be regular updates of analyses, a case study and leading of readings from various sources, including Booij’s 2010 Construction Morphology.

Fall 2019

LING 1000
Language in U.S. Society
Prof. Chase Raymond

Humans use language as part of almost everything we do in social life. Whether it’s an activity as mundane as chit-chatting with a friend or family member over dinner, or something as globally significant as a presidential debate or UN Summit, language provides us with the tools to make it happen. And yet, despite the fact that we live our lives through language (or perhaps because of that fact), most of us rarely take the time to critically examine its influence on us, nor our influence on it. This course provides an occasion for this sort of critical thinking by offering an introduction to language in U.S. society. As such, our aims are as much sociological as they are linguistic. 

We will begin with some foundational topics, including regional and dialectal variation, register and style (including shifting between them), prescriptivism and descriptivism, and some pervasive ideologies about the nature of language and how language ‘should’ be. We will then explore the relationship between language and some specific social phenomena and institutions, taking as cases-in-point race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, politics, various forms of media, and the criminal justice system. In our final unit, we’ll discuss language and normativity—specifically how, in and through our use of language, we consistently go about categorizing, labeling, and evaluating the world, thus re-creating what’s ‘normal’ vs. ‘abnormal’, ‘acceptable’ vs. ‘unacceptable’, ‘right’ vs. ‘wrong’, and so on. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own personal experiences with regard to each of these topics as we proceed through the course. 

This course can be applied toward fulfillment of either the Arts & Sciences Distribution Requirement (for Social Science), or the Arts & Sciences Diversity Requirement (for U.S. Perspective).

LING 1200
Programming for Linguists
Prof. Mans Hulden

This class presents techniques for computer programming in high level programming languages such as Python to address a range of problems with a specific focus on language processing and linguistics. The class is suitable for students with little to no prior experience in computing or programming.
This course covers the fundamentals of programming using the programming language Python. After the course, students should be familiar with variables, data types, control structures, reading and writing files, functions, and basic data structures. The focus is on program development for natural language processing and computational linguistics. Students will become familiar with programming and using third-party libraries to accomplish fundamental tasks in computing.

LING 3220
Native American Languages in their Social and Cultural Context
Prof. Andy Cowell

This course looks at a number of different native languages of North America, focusing especially on the relationship between language and culture, including such topics as oral narrative and song, place-naming, personal naming, connections between language and the natural world, language endangerment and revitalization, language and ceremony, and linguistic relativity.

LING 3800
Language and Politics
Dr. Adam Hodges

In this course, we will examine the integral role language plays in politics; and, more generally, how power operates in linguistic practices and political interaction. As we critically examine how language is used to articulate, maintain and subvert relations of power in society, emphasis will be placed on the current US political context as we move from the 2016 presidential election toward the 2020 campaign. The course will provide you with a foundation for understanding how language shapes contemporary political interaction and an opportunity to hone your critical thinking and analytic skills.

LING 3800
Language and Digital Media
Prof. Kira Hall

This course offers a sociocultural linguistic approach to what has come to be called ‘digital discourse’—the multimodal forms of interaction associated with technologies such as text messaging, blogging, photo sharing, mobile phones, gaming, social network sites, and video sharing.  We will examine how digital communication technologies are inspiring new uses of language, facilitating the development of new kinds of communities, and changing the very contours of social interaction.  Participating students will conduct original sociolinguistic research that evaluates some aspect of language use on a digital platform of their choosing. This course has limited enrollment: I am looking for an energetic and committed group of students who spend much of their lives online to help design this ‘launch’ of what will become a regular CU Boulder undergraduate course offering.

Prerequisite: A previous course in sociocultural linguistics (i.e., Ling 1000, Ling 2400, Ling 3545, Ling 4800), or consent of the instructor (kira.hall@colorado.edu)

LING 4100 [4632/6632]
Machine Learning and Linguistics
Prof. Mans Hulden

This course provides an introduction to machine learning for advanced undergraduate students (4632), and graduate students (6632), including students in the CLASIC MS program. It is an ideal course for students already knowledgeable in programming who wish to gain knowledge in natural language processing and is an intermediate course between LING 1200 (Programming for Linguistics) and LING/CSCI 5832 (Natural Language Processing).

The course covers fundamentals of classification and clustering in a natural language processing context. Students will become familiar with basic classifiers that operate on text and be able to independently implement various standard machine learning solutions to text-based processing tasks. More advanced models, such as recurrent neural networks will also be discussed and students will become familiar with software libraries for solving language-related problems with neural models. A final project is included where students solve some natural language problem with machine learning techniques.

LING 7420
Construction Grammar
Prof. Laura Michaelis

The [Construction Grammar] approach supposes a grammar to consist of a repertory of conventional associations of lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic information called constructions. Familiar grammar rules are simply constructions that are deficient in not containing any lexical information except for specification of rather gross syntactic categories—and, in some cases, lacking any pragmatic values as well. Every such conventional association that must be learned or recognized separately by the speaker of a language is a construction. This includes all idioms and partially productive lexico-grammatical patterns (Kay 1992: 310)

In this class we will explore the theory and practice of Construction Grammar (CxG), a formalized theory of syntax that makes a decisive break with the universalist tradition in grammar, whether represented by 'autonomist' approaches, in which syntactic generalizations make no reference to properties of meaning or use, or functionalist approaches, in which grammatical structures are viewed as direct reflexes of communicative needs and practices. In CxG, the lexicon, an array of complexes of linguistic information, is taken as the best model for grammar. The grammar is accordingly viewed as a hierarchically organized inventory of constructions (form-meaning-function triads) of different types and different levels of abstraction and lexical fixity, including multi-word expressions, sentence types, verbal argument realization patterns, and phrase types. Constructions mean what they mean in the same way that words do: by convention rather than by head-driven lexical composition. Because constructions are inherently meaningful, their meanings can conflict with those of the words within them, leading to a phenomenon known as coercion, or resolvable semantic conflict (e.g., Give me some more pillow, I immediately preferred that solution). CG intends its mechanisms to account for all the patterns in a given language, including fixed formulas like hit close to home and burn the midnight oil, ‘snow clones’ (e.g., This is your brain on x) and formal idioms like the ’the Xer, the Yer’. We will explore the use of CG to describe linguistic innovations, including both novel constructions and novel construction-word combinations. An important aspect of CxG is its lexicalist commitment: there are relatively few phrasal constructions and most of the possible syntactic combinations are seen to come from the combinatoric potentials of words, including idiom words (like blithering). So most of our work as syntacticians will involve describing detailed lexemes and lexeme classes. 

Work expectations include leading 1-2 class discussions, turning in a couple of problem sets and writing a corpus-based case study of a construction of your choice in a language of your choice. Readings include articles from a variety of related traditions (including formal syntactic theory, exemplar-based approaches to grammar, grammaticalization theory and discourse-pragmatic theory) and the book Explain me This by Adele Goldberg (Princeton UP; 2018). We will draw upon a ‘master construction list’ of about 100 English constructions, which we will augment as the semester proceeds.

LING 7800
Language and Thought (in Bilinguals)
Prof. Bhuvana Narasimhan

This course explores the relationship between language and thought in bilingual speakers of different languages. Some of the questions we'll address are: Does the language we speak influence the way we think? And if so, do speakers of more than one language also have multiple ways of thinking? For instance, do bilinguals process color distinctions, classify motion events, or conceptualize time in different ways depending on the language they're using? How do bilingual speakers differ from their monolingual counterparts in the way they perceive, categorize, remember, and reason about the world? What kinds of studies can we conduct to address these questions?

There are no exams. Instead the course aims to foster the development of research ideas in two ways. First, students will engage in discussions and presentations of articles, and develop their own ideas for a research paper in a collaborative environment. And second, students will learn to design and run psycholinguistic experiments and conduct their own experiment to investigate the relationship between language and thought.

Prerequisite: Instructor consent. Graduate students at all levels are welcome (the course counts towards the Cognitive Science Graduate Certificate). If you are an advanced undergraduate student with a keen interest in the course topics, please feel free to get in touch with Prof. Narasimhan (narasimb@colorado.edu).

Spring 2019

LING 1000
Language and US Society

This course provides a non‐technical introduction to the relationship between language and society in the United States. First, we will consider perceptions and realities regarding standard and nonstandard varieties of US English, including diverse forms of slang, Southern English, Western English, African American Vernacular English, gendered speech, and even ways of talking associated with valley girls, rappers, and nerds. Second, the course explores various issues associated with the multilingual nature of U.S. society, such as the maintenance and loss of Native American languages, controversies surrounding the official English movement and bilingual education, the social histories of U.S. ‘creole’ languages, and accent‐based discrimination in the media and the workplace. Course Objectives: (1) To gain a grounding in linguistics as a field of study. (2) To recognize the role of language in social‐cultural interactions (3) To gain a deeper understanding of linguistic diversity in the United States through an examination of American English and its varieties and the experiences of minority language speakers. (4) To promote understanding of individual and societal bi/multilingualism. (5) To explore political, social, educational, and moral questions and issues related to language diversity in the U.S., and take positions.

LING 1010
The Study of Words
MW 1:00-1:50

English is a Germanic language, but about 60% of its words come from Latin or Greek. In this class, we will trace these words back to their origins by breaking them down into their component parts. We will use word histories to investigate how and why word meanings change—whether through changes in cultural institutions and values, as the result of cultural contact, or via the human imaginative capacity. At a practical level, you will increase the number of hard words that you can use appropriately in writing and conversation, and learn to figure out the meanings of hard words that you have never seen before. Your grade will be based on your scores on 8 problem sets, 7 online quizzes, 2 tests and an online final exam. You need only one concise text and its associated workbook: English Words from Latin & Greek Elements, Ayers, Worthen & Cherry (University of Arizona Press). You will also need an iclicker. The course is fun, doable and teaches a skill of lifelong value. You’ll never think about words quite the same way again.

LING 1020
Languages of the World
MW 1:00-1:50

There are more than 7000 languages (The Ethnologue) spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world’s languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a great part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization.

LING 1900
Literacy Practicum
F 10:00-10:50

Students enrolled in the community-based learning Literacy Practicum earn an extra hour of credit while working with literacy and language learners in the Boulder community.  Undergraduate volunteers, or “Buff Buddies,” may choose to work with children, teenagers, or adults in programs sponsored by one of our four community partners: University Hill Elementary School, Boulder Public Library, Student-Worker Alliance Program, and Family Learning Center.  The program is open to students co-enrolled in one of the department's sociolinguistic or TESOL courses, or previously enrolled in Ling 1900. Students will be contacted early in the semester by the Literacy Practicum team regarding the dates and times of each program and the required orientation. For more information about this rewarding learning experience, visit the Literacy Practicum website at https://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/literacy-practicum. We hope you will consider joining the Practicum!

LING 3800
Language Birth and Death
TTH 12:30-1:45

The purpose of this course is to examine theories and methodologies for the discovery of how various functional categories, i.e. meanings, have emerged in grammatical systems of individual languages. The course therefore addresses the fundamental question: how the grammars come about? This inquiry is a part of the field of grammaticalization studies. The main activity will be to research the motivation for and sources of grammatical markers in the language of student’s choice. A large part of the course will consist of hands-on practice in discovering the emergence of functions based on hitherto undescribed data. As an outcome of this course, students will gain a better understanding of the structure of individual languages and an understanding of reasons for similarities and differences across languages. For many issues covered in the course we will examine open questions within linguistic theory. The course will be of interest to students in linguistics, and because of the choice of hitherto undescribed data, to students of Russian and Chinese. No knowledge of either Russian or Chinese is required. The course will also deal with the processes leading to the abandonment of language and consequently to language loss.

LING 4100/5800
Language and Embodiment
TTh 2:00-3:15

How does our mind construct meaning from language? Do we store abstract concepts that are completely detached from our physical experiences? Or is meaning “embodied” – do we mentally activate the experience of our body interacting with the environment whenever we use language? Research suggests that when we process language we mentally simulate the bodily movements associated with linguistic meanings. For instance, when we process verbs such as “grasp” or “push”, we re-enact grasping or pushing movements in our minds, rather like playing a mental video game! The view that we use our bodily experiences to understand language challenges the bulk of traditional wisdom about how we construct meaning. In this course, we will discuss different theories about the relationship between language and body during weekly discussions. During in-class lab sessions you will also learn to conduct your own study to help you explore your own questions about language and embodiment.

LING 4610/5610
English Structure for TESOL

Coming soon!

LING/ANTH 4800
Language and Culture
A. Cowell
MWF 9:00-9:50
GUGG 206

This course is an introduction to Linguistic Anthropology, or more informally, the connections between language and culture. The course will look at issues such as language and personal identity, language and gender, language and race, language and ethnicity, language and social class, and differing social dialects (American Indian Vernacular English, African-American Vernacular English). We will also examine issues such as language ideologies, the relationship between language and nation-states, and both the spread of global English and reactions/resistance to this. The basic framework of the class will be on language as a form of social work, with heavy focus on language in interaction and the social construction of identities in interaction. Relying primarily on Practice Theory, we will look at the relationship of language to both individual and group agency.

The course will be a mix of general/theoretical readings and case studies. Case studies will draw on a wide variety of languages and cultures, including the US and English, as well as Native American, Polynesian and other indigenous languages from around the world (with a discussion of linguistic relativity), the Middle East, Papua New Guinea, East Asia and Africa. We will also examine the issue of language endangerment and extinction, as well as language revitalization, in various global contexts.

LING 7570
Advanced Diachronic Linguistics
Zygmunt Frajzyngier
TTH 9:30-10:45
ECON 16

One of the fundamental questions in linguistics is in what way languages are similar and in what way they are different. Another fundamental question is why languages are similar and why are they different. Frajzyngier with Shay 2016 (available to students in the PDF form) propose that languages differ in the functions they encode and that the functions encoded in the grammatical system are one of the main factors affecting the syntax of individual languages.The main question in the present course is how the coding of functions emerges in the grammatical systems. We know where grammatical markers come from (Kuteva and Heine in press, to be available to students in the PDF form) but we do not know why, some languages encode some functions and not the others.I will be presenting in class results of on-going research and writing on the topic of the course, to be published by Oxford University Press. These presentations will outline the theoretical premises and hopefully a useful methodology. I will be presenting in class results of on-going research and writing on the topic of the course, to be published by Oxford University Press. These presentations will outline the theoretical premises and hopefully a useful methodology.This is a research rather than a reading course in that students are expected to conduct research on their own topics on languages of their choice. Term papers will be expected to be contributions to the field. It is expected that students will submit those papers to professional conferences. Prerequisites: The basic courses in morphology, syntax, and semantics. The grading will be on contribution to the class and term papers

Frajzyngier, Zygmunt with Erin Shay. 2016. The role of functions in syntax: a unified approach to language theory, description, and typology. Benjamins: Amsterdam. Kuteva, Tania and Bernd Heine. (in press). World lexicon of grammaticalization, 2nd revised ed. Cambridge: CUP.

LING 7800
Bilingualism in Context
Chase Raymond
W 2:30-5:00
Hellems 285

Recent decades have played host to an enormous surge in research on bilingualism. This spike in interest has generated many (sometimes competing) perspectives on bilingual issues from a range of academic traditions and sub-disciplines, including not only Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, but also Anthropology, Sociology, and Communication Studies (amongst others). The result is a body of literature that is not only robust in terms of its findings, but also diverse in terms of its methodologies and theoretical frameworks.

This Ph.D.-level seminar on ‘Bilingualism in Context’ will actively engage with this body of research by approaching both ‘bilingualism’ and ‘context’ from a variety of perspectives, with a significant focus on code-switching phenomena. At the more ‘micro’ end of the spectrum, we will look at bilingualism in terms of language production and comprehension, drawing on studies from cognitive/psycholinguistics, experimental phonetics, and conversation analysis. At the more ‘macro’ end of the spectrum, we will tackle topics such as bilingual education, official/institutionalized mono-/bi-/multilingualism, and the ideologies surrounding these issues, drawing on research from sociolinguistics, sociology, and linguistic anthropology. Significant time will also be dedicated to bridging the micro-macro gap, with an aim toward developing an understanding of bilingualism that is layered and contextualized.

The objectives of this course, then, are two-fold. First, most obviously, the goal is to provide a concrete, substantive understanding of various aspects of bilingualism, from a range of perspectives and contexts. The second, more overarching goal, though, is concerned with theoretical frameworks and methodologies, and their implications for research on linguistic phenomena in general. The course should thus equip students with an array of tools, and an eye toward interdisciplinarity, which can also be used to tackle non-bilingualism-specific pursuits in future coursework and research.

Class meetings will be devoted primarily to critical discussion of assigned readings, as well as advancing individual research projects. MA students are welcome to enroll with permission of instructor.

LING 7800
Language and the Middle Class
Kira Hall
TH 2:00-4:30
Hellems 285

This seminar approaches the middle class as a critically important site for research on language and society, whether conceptualized in economic, empirical, structural, ideological, or performative terms. Since the turn of the millennium, processes of globalization have contributed to rapid growth in the size and scope of the world’s middle classes, contributing to a form of subjectivity characterized by many social theorists as “middle-classness”. While often unmarked and under-analyzed in research on language and society, the middle class plays an integral role not only in language standardization, language maintenance, and language shift, but also in the semiotics of social life more generally. Indexical understandings advanced by citizens identifying with the middle classes—whether directed to specific language varieties, political speech, youth style, college slang, humor, branding, ally talk, politeness, civility, or figures of personhood—are readily circulated by the media and rise to prominence in the public imaginary in ways that often affect existing lines of social stratification and inequality. Throughout the semester, we will review the work of sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, and discourse analysts who have written about social class alongside the work of social theorists whose work on class has been influential for language study. The primary purpose of the seminar is to assess the ways that the middle class matters to the social analytics of language. Participants will examine some aspect of middle-classness in a local, regional, national, or global context through the lens of language. Final projects will advance an argument about language and the middle class by applying social theory to the analysis of discourse examples in a selected domain. The goal will be to develop a first draft of a conference paper, dissertation chapter, or publishable article.

Fall 2018

Undergraduate Courses

LING 1000: Language in U.S. Society
Olivia Hirschey
Mon/Wed, 12:00-12:50 (Friday Recitations)
HUM 250

Humans use language in almost everything that we do, from situations as ordinary as a conversation with friends about weekend plans, to less-ordinary situations such a presidential debate or an international peace negotiation. And yet, rarely do we critically examine our language use, particularly as it relates to identity and social norms. This course provides an opportunity to explore language use in the United States from a social, interdisciplinary perspective. The course will begin with a foundational introduction to sociolinguistic study, as we explore topics including regional and dialectal variation; prescriptivism and descriptivism; accents, jargon and slang; registers, style, and code-switching; and a variety of ideologies about how language should- or should not- be used in the United States. We will then explore language use through particular themes and institutional contexts, such as language and race/ethnicity, language and gender, language and the law, language and education, language and politics, and language and media. Throughout the course, we will draw on a variety of linguistic data to analyze the current landscape of language use in the United States. Students are encouraged to reflect on their own personal experiences with regard to each of these topics as we proceed through the course.

This course satisfies the new A&S General Education Diversity requirement, U.S. Perspective, and can also count towards the Distribution requirement (for students who matriculate fall 2018); the Core Curriculum Content area for United States or Contemporary societies (for students who matriculated prior to fall 2018); and the MAPS Social Science requirement.  

LING 2000: Introduction to Linguistics
Ghazaleh Kazeminejad
Mon/Wed, 3:00-3:50 (Friday Recitations)
HUM 250

Human language is one of the most complex systems in nature and is our indispensable tool in communicating with other members of our species. This course starts with studying the nature of human language, and continues with questions like how we can systematically study human language regardless of the differences between languages, how do children acquire language, how is language related to thought, how do we use language in practice, how does language change over time, and how is linguistics an interdisciplinary field related to cognitive science, neuroscience, computer science and artificial intelligence, and psychology, to name but a few. By the end of this course, you will have the tools required to analyze language structure and use, and will be able to answer and discuss the above questions.

Graduate Courses

LING 6450: Syntactic Analysis
Prof. Laura Michaelis-Cummings
Tues/Thurs, 12:30-1:45
Hellems 285

This course introduces the tools that formal theories of syntax use to represent the connection between meaning and grammatical patterns at every level—from the noun phrase to the clause to the complex sentence. We will focus on the following aspects of the form-meaning connection: the relationship between verb meaning and verb morphosyntax, the relationship between semantic participant roles and grammatical relations, the relationship between semantic dependency and constituent structure and the relationship between discourse relations and syntactic relations. We will ask how various models meet the challenge of describing free word-order languages, and idiomatic patterns in various languages. The emphasis throughout the course will be on the following big questions:

  • How much hierarchical structure do we need in syntax, if any?
  • What's a head?
  • How do we determine whether a group of words is a constituent?
  • Why assume that syntax and semantics are two separate levels in grammar?
  • Is grammar a set of abstract principles or is it instead a set of constructions?
  • How is the meaning of a complex expression determined?
  • How are idiomatic and regular patterns interleaved in syntax?
  • Are grammatical functions like subject universal?
  • Are there languages that have no syntax?
  • Is syntax adapted to our communicative needs?
  • Can we find traces of grammar evolution in our current grammar?

We will begin by studying the intellectual environment that led up to the development of generative syntax in the 1950s, including the study of formal languages in computer science. We will then study the workings of transformational-generative syntax, the arguments that linguists have made against its central guiding assumption—the autonomy of syntax—and alternative models that accord a central place to the symbolic and communicative functions of syntax. We will learn about several such theories, including Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, which uses signs (modeled as feature structures) to capture generalizations previously taken as evidence for hierarchical syntactic structure and syntactic transformations. We will use this model to study anaphoric reference and properties of grammatical types like auxiliary verb. However, we will do some of our close syntactic analyses using a relatively informal model called Role and Reference Grammar, because it focuses on the discourse-syntax interface, has the most flexible approach to grammatical relations and is designed to apply to a wide array of languages, including polysynthetic ones. 

Your grade in this class will be based on your performance on 10 problems sets assigned throughout the semester. Each problem set consists of 3-4 questions. These questions ask you to describe generalizations in small data sets using appropriate tools of syntactic representation (like tree diagrams and attribute-value matrices). The two required texts are Levine, Syntactic Analysis: An HPSG-based Approach and Van Valin and LaPolla Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function.​

LING 7800: Narrative
Prof. Andy Cowell
Tues/Thurs, 9:30-10:45
CHEM 146

This course is designed to provide a general overview to the topic of narrative discourse. By discourse, I mean verbal narratives told or performed for some other party, so interactive perspectives will be key to the course. We will not be talking about classic written literary narrative. We will however examine blogs, web posts, and other kinds of more informal written styles of narratives. What I mean by narrative will turn out to be fairly complex, as all seemingly simple topics are.

Key questions I hope to focus on are: 1) defining what narrative is, and/or what different types or genres of narrative are; 2) examining how narrative emerges contextually from discourse, including topics such as the proposing of a narrative, approval of narrative initiation by listeners, meta-narrative elements of narratives which justify the initiation and continuation of the narrative, listener feedback, and signaling narrative conclusion; 3) collaborative narrative, its form and social functions; 4) the internal structure, grammar and organization of narratives; 5) the ways in which narratives negotiate and frame agency and identity; 6) personal narratives, including “conversion” and “self-discovery” narratives, as well as narratives of origins and historical narratives; 7) “performance” and more formalized narrative settings; 7) ethnopoetics and comparative narrative practices across cultures.

I addition, some key questions will occur throughout the semester: 8) reasons why narratives are used as opposed to other conversational and discursive practices, and why they are effective strategies for various kinds of social work; 9) techniques for “reading” narratives syntagmatically and paradigmatically, especially in relation to what is left unsaid, or what is implied, or what could have been said but was not, as opposed to just what actually is said; 10) a view of narrative as contextually embedded, both locally and globally, in a certain room or in a certain discourse in power, in ways which make the notion of the self-contained narrative an impossibility.

In general, the course will draw from a variety of domains and methodologies: communication studies and institutional discourse studies, linguistic anthropology, interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, discourse studies, performance studies, and ethnopoetics.

Spring 2018

Undergraduate Courses

LING/CLAS 1010: THE STUDY OF WORDS
MW 1:00-1:50, Hellems 141 (Friday recitations)
Professor Laura Michaelis

Do you want to increase the impact of your writing or speech? Do you want to improve your verbal score on graduate exams like the GRE? Do you want to understand the technical words in your field? Do you wonder why our Anglo-Saxon language owes so much to an extinct Italian empire? Do you want to know where we got that strange word syllabus? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, LING/CLAS 1010 might be for you.

English is a Germanic language, but about 60% of its words come from Latin or Greek. In this class, we will trace these words back to their origins by breaking them down into their component parts. We will use word histories to investigate how and why word meanings change—whether through changes in cultural institutions and values, as the result of cultural contact, or via the human imaginative capacity. At a practical level, you will increase the number of hard words that you can use appropriately in writing and conversation, and learn to figure out the meanings of hard words that you have never seen before. 

Your grade will be based on your scores on 8 problem sets, 7 online quizzes, 2 tests and an online final exam. You need only one concise text and its associated workbook: English Words from Latin & Greek Elements, Ayers, Worthen & Cherry (University of Arizona Press). You will also need an iclicker. The course is fun, doable and teaches a skill of lifelong value. You’ll never think about words quite the same way again.

 

LING 1020: LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
MW 9:00-9:50, Hellems 201 (Friday recitations)
Marielle Moraine Butters

There are more than 7000 languages (The Ethnologue) spoken in the world and each one of them has its own unique characteristics and history. Linguistic diversity allows scholars to understand what is universal and unique to all world’s languages and offers a window into the cultures and minds of their speakers. This introductory course explores the diversity of human language through the lens of a linguist. We will study a subset of over a hundred languages of the world. We will compare the similarities and differences of world languages across four linguistic domains: Phonology (sounds), Morphology (words), Syntax (sentences), and Semantics (meaning). We will learn about language families and how linguists categorize these families. This means that a great part of the course will involve describing the languages’ linguistic features and identifying their language family through in-depth analysis and discussion of data. We will also explore the effects of language contact, language death, preservation, and revitalization.

LING 3220: AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES IN THEIR SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
MWF 9:00-9:50, MCOL E186
Professor Andy Cowell

This course examines the social and cultural context of Native American languages. The first two-three weeks of the course involve looking at one Native American language in detail from a linguistic standpoint -- the Arapaho language, native language of Boulder. Following this, the course broadens its focus to examine all Native American languages, including topics such as place names, personal names, traditional oral narratives, songs and music, ritual and oratory, language and worldview, and language endangerment and revitalization. Each student will choose one particular language as a personal focus for the semester, to supplement the in-class coverage.

LING 3430: SEMANTICS
T/Th 11:00-12:15, Hellems 145
Professor Bhuvana Narasimhan

In this course we will explore how we use language to convey meaning. This enterprise raises a number of interesting questions: What are the kinds of meanings conveyed by the lexical and grammatical devices available in a language? Do languages differ in how they convey meaning? How much does context contribute to our understanding of meaning? What methods can we use to study meaning? We will investigate these and a range of other issues in semantics and pragmatics, focusing on both data and theory.

LING 3545 : WORLD LANGUAGE POLICIES
MWF 2:00-2:50, Hellems 145
Velda Khoo

World Language Policies provides an introduction to language rights, language policies, and language planning from a national and international perspective. The course will cover areas such as the legal status of languages and language rights; the interrelations between globalization, nationalism, ethnicity, identity and language policy; linguistic ecology; multilingualism as a problem or resource as well as issues on language minoritization and endangerment. We will examine a number of case studies of language policy implementation, both historical and current, through the lens of different theoretical frameworks.  

Throughout the course, consideration is given to the application of knowledge gained to real world situations. We will examine various notions of what language policy consists, how it operates, its historical roots, and ways policy can be studied empirically. By the end of the course, students will be able to demonstrate a broad understanding of the main issues in language policy and planning, and an understanding of the complex factors that go into language planning decisions at local, national and transnational levels. 

LING 4560: LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
T/Th 9:30-10:45, MUEN E064
Marcia L. Walsh-Aziz

How do children develop language? In a relatively short span of time, children acquire all aspects of language. This class explores the development of phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics in the context of children from infant to school-age.  This multi-disciplinary class highlights language acquisition theories, cognition and its relation to language, and theory of mind.  Students are asked to apply knowledge learned in this course to analyze children's language development through videos and language transcripts.  Beyond typical development of language, language differences, bilingual language development, and a few disorders associated with language development such as autism and hearing loss are also explored.  

ING 4910: TESOL PRACTICUM
W 5:00-6:15, HUMN 1B70
Jennifer Campbell

This course is a teaching practicum for English-Language-Learner (ELL or ESL) contexts. Through the practicum, students will gain practical classroom experience with an ELL community-partner. We will pair the “real-world” experiences with theoretical discussions on relevant topics including ethics and World Englishes, individual-learner styles, selecting and using language materials, lesson planning and classroom management, and reflective-teaching practices. Students will meet weekly to review their on-going community-partner observations and teaching experiences as well as explore these relevant topics and develop professional materials for the TESOL field.