Current and Future Course Offerings
See below for descriptions of all linguistics courses, and the listing of many electives.
Be sure to check the
Registrar's catalog for detailed information
on the required courses and for official and most up-to-date list of current offerings.
Check the Registrar's schedule of offered courses for
this and next semester's offerings when they become available.
Spring 2009
Core Courses for Linguistics & Computational Linguistics
Fall 2008
Core Courses for Linguistics & Computational Linguistics
LING 100A
Description | Introduction to Linguistics
M,W,Th 12:10 PM - 1:00 PM
Sophia Malamud (website)
Previously: Fall 2007 Course website |
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COSI 112B
Description | Modal, Temporal, & Spacial Logic for Language
Tu, Fri 10:40 AM - 12:00 PM
James Pustejovsky
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LING 125B
Description | Universal Grammar
M,W 3:40 PM - 5:00 PM
Lotus Goldberg (website)
Previously: Fall 2007 |
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LING 130A
Description | Semantics: the structure of concepts
M,W,Th 11:10 AM - 12:00 PM
Sophia Malamud (website)
Previously: Fall 2007 Course website |
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LING 160B
Description | Mathematical Methods in Linguistics (NEW)
M,W 2:10 PM - 3:30 PM |
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LING 190/COSI 216
Description | Corpus Methods for Linguists (NEW)
M,W,Th 1:10 PM - 2:00 PM
Lotus Goldberg & Roser Saurí
This Topics course changes with every offering. |
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COSI 217B
Description | Natural Language Processing Systems (NEW)
M,W,Th 12:10 AM - 1:00 PM
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Electives and Cross-listed courses
| PHIL 36B | Mind, Meaning and Language - Berislav Marusic |
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| COSI 101B | Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence - Jordan Pollack |
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| PHIL 6A | Introduction to Symbolic Logic - Jerry Samet |
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| and other electives |
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Courses which are core only in Computational Linguistics, and are electives in Language & Linguistics, are marked [CL]
LING 100A Introduction to Linguistics
Usually offered every fall. Course website.
Instructor: Sophia Malamud.
Ling 100 is a general introduction to the nature, history, and use of human language, speech, and writing.
It is appropriate for any undergraduate or graduate student interested in language or its use. Topics include:
* sounds, forms, and meanings in the world's languages
* the biological basis of human language and other animal communication systems
* relations of language to cognition, communication, and social organization
* spoken versus written language
* the reconstruction of linguistic history and relatedness among languages
* dialect variation and language standardization
* language learning by children
* the neurology of language and language disorders.
The course has no prerequisites.
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LING 110A Phonology
Usually offered every other spring. Instructor: Henrietta Hung.
An introduction to generative phonology, the theory of natural language sound systems. Includes discussion of
* articulatory phonetics
* distinctive feature theory
* the concept of a "natural class"
* morphology and the nature of morphophonemics
* universal properties of the rules that relate morphophonemic and phonetic representations.
Prerequisite: LING 100a
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COSI 114B Topics in Computational Linguistics [CL]
Usually offered every spring.
Provides a fundamental understanding of the problems in natural language understanding by computers,
and the theory and practice of current computational linguistic systems.
Of interest to students of artificial intelligence, algorithms, and the computational processes of comprehension and understanding.
Prerequisites: COSI 21b or 29a; COSI 35a or COSI 101a.
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LING 120B Syntactic Theory
Usually offered every spring. Instructor: Lotus Goldberg
Extends the syntactic framework developed in the introductory course through the study of such problems as the complement system,
the lexicon, and constraints, with emphasis on their relevance to universal grammar.
Prerequisite: LING 100a
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LING 125B Universal Grammar
Usually offered every fall. Instructor: Lotus Goldberg
Advanced topics in the theory of language typology and universal grammar. May be repeated for credit with permission of instructor.
Prerequisite: LING 100a or permission of the instructor.
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LING 128A Investigations in an Unfamiliar Language
Usually offered every other fall. Instructor: Henrietta Hung
Using a native speaker of an unfamiliar language (such as Turkish or Amharic) as a source of data, the class will investigate the
structure of the language and compare it with the structure of English and other familiar languages. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisite: ANTH 61b or LING 100a.
May not be repeated for credit by students who have taken ANTH 125b in previous semesters.
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LING 130a Semantics: The Structure of Concepts
Usually offered every fall. Course website.
Instructor: Sophia Malamud.
Explores the semantic structure of language in terms of current linguistic theory.
This course introduces the components and formal mechanisms underlying meaning in human language and uses them as a window on the human mind, its psychological development and adult cognitive processes.
Questions we address include
* What kinds of concepts can things like a, no, un, or a determiner encode?
* What is the reference of terms for non-existant things, like a unicorn, or the perfect person?
* What are the conceptual parts that make up word meanings?
* How are these "atoms" of meaning combined in a mathematical procedure to yield the meaning of sentences?
* What is truth, and how does it relate to linguistic meaning?
Formal tools from Set Theory and Predicate Logic will be introduced and applied both to the linguistic and to the cognitive characterization of meaning.
Prerequisite: LING 100a or permission of the instructor.
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CS 131b Algorithms for Computational Linguistics [CL]
This is an introductory graduate level course on the computational properties of natural languages and
the fundamental algorithms for processing natural languages.
The course will provide an in-depth presentation of the major algorithms used in NLP, including Lexical, Morphological,
Syntactic and Semantic analysis, with the primary focus on parsing algorithms and their
analysis. The course is a recommended first-semester class for both the MLT and PhD in Language Technologies programs, and a required class for some tracks of the
Computational Linguistics MA.
The main objectives of the course are the following:
* Develop a thorough understanding of the principles and formal methods used in the
design and analysis of language processing algorithms.
* Provide an in-depth presentation of the major algorithms used in NLP, including
Lexical, Morphological, Syntactic, and Semantic analysis, with the primary focus
on parsing algorithms and their analysis.
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CS 133a Statistical Methods in Computational Linguistics [CL]
This course introduces some
of the central themes and techniques that have emerged in statistical methods for language
technologies and natural language processing. Topics include
* the source-channel paradigm from information theory
* predictive language models
* hidden Markov models
* the EM algorithm in its many guises
* maximum entropy methods
* classification and regression techniques.
Selected case studies involving technologies such as word and document
clustering, sense disambiguation, parsing, text classification, and machine translation are
presented. The material draws upon machine learning, statistics, and information theory,
but only an elementary knowledge of probability is a prerequisite for the course.
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Ling 135a / CS 135a Computational Semantics
Computational semantics is the study of how to
automate the process of constructing and reasoning with meaning representations of natural
language expressions. Some traditional topics we will cover include:
* construction of meaning representations
* semantic underspecification
* anaphora resolution
* presupposition projection
* quantifier scope resolution.
Computational semantics has points of contact with the areas of lexical semantics (word sense disambiguation and role labelling),
discourse semantics, formal semantics, knowledge representation and automated reasoning.
Ling 130a or Ling140a are recommended, but not required.
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LING 140a Discourse and Pragmatics
Usually offered every spring. Course website.
Instructor: Sophia Malamud.
This course studies the architecture of conversation and text.
*What's wrong with the Mad Hatter?* - This and other crucial questions will be raised (and some even answered!) in this course on language meaning in context.
We'll be exploring how sentences are put together into texts and
conversations, how speakers and hearers exploit each other's expectations and cooperate
(or fail to cooperate) in the process of communication, and how speakers of different
languages manage their conversations.
Assuming a theory of sentence-level linguistic competence, what phenomena are still to be accounted for in the explication of language knowledge?
The class explores topics in language use in context, including anaphora, deixis, implicature, speech acts, information packaging, and pragmatics of dialogue.
This course has no prerequisites.
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Ling 160b Mathematical Foundations for Linguistics
This course introduces students to fundamental mathematical concepts needed for
advanced work in linguistics. Topics include:
* set theory
* theory of relations
* fundamentals of logic
* formal systems
* lambda calculus
* formal language theory
* theory of automata
* basics of probability and statistics.
This course has no pre-requisites.
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LING 190b Topics in Cognitive Science
Advanced topics in linguistics and cognitive science, varying by year.
LING 197a Language Acquisition and Development
Usually offered every spring, or every other spring. Course website.
Instructor: Sophia Malamud.
The central problem of language acquisition is to explain what makes this formidable task possible.
Theories of language acquisition are studied, and conclusions are based on recent research in the development of syntax, semantics, and phonology.
The overall goal is to arrive at a coherent picture of the language learning process.
Prerequisite: LING 100a or permission of the instructor.
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CS 217a Natural Language Processing Systems [CL]
Introduction to computational approaches to linguistics, semantics, knowledge representation for language, and issues in parsing and inferences.
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NOTE: Always check with the department and the Registrar to verify which courses are actually offered. This is simply a listing of approved electives offered in the past
Electives often available in the fall:
ANTH 61B Language in American Life
ANTH 139B Language, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
COSI 21B Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
COSI 101B Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence
ENG 11A Introduction to Literary Method
NPSY 22B Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience
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PHIL 6A Introduction to Symbolic Logic
PHIL 36B Mind, Meaning and Language
PHIL 137A Innateness
PHIL 140A Logic and Language
PHIL 145B Topics in the Philosophy of Language
Electives often available in the spring:
ANTH 186B Linguistic Anthropology
COSI 30A Introduction to the Theory of Computation
ENG 11A Introduction to Literary Method
HBRW 167B The Revival of Modern Hebrew
NPSY 199A Human Neuropsychology
PHIL 6A Introduction to Symbolic Logic
PHIL 37A Philosophy of Language
PHIL 39B Philosophy of Mind
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