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Undergraduate Program

Courses

• Spring 2010
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Faculty

Honors in Linguistics

Why Major in Linguistics?

Additional Undergraduate courses

MAP: Societies and the Social Sciences: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Language of America's Ethnic Minorities
V55.0616 4 points.

This course examines the role of language in communities in the United States, specifically within African-American, Asian-American, Latino, and Native American populations. It explores the relationship of language to culture, race, and ethnicity. In particular, it looks for similarities and differences across these communities and considers the role that language experiences play in current models of race and ethnicity.

MAP: Societies and the Social Sciences: Linguistic Perspectives
V55.0660 4 points.

Examines language from a dual perspective: as part of mankind's biological endowment and as a social phenomenon. Considers the structure, universality, and diversity of human language. Introduces the core areas of grammar: its sound system, the structures of words and sentences, and meanings. Examines the representation of language in the brain, first language acquisition, and processing. Introduces linguistic universals, dialect, sociolects, and the mechanism of linguistic change.

Freshman Honors Seminar: From Moving Articulators to Sound Structure.
Gafos. 4 points.

Meaning, in spoken language, is communicated via sound. Sound is generated from the physical medium of moving articulators and their acoustic consequences. How can this physical system, the human vocal tract, communicate such richness of distinctions in meaning? To what extent is the structure of sound patterns in language influenced by constraints of the physical system? The course addresses these questions by seeking to identify the proper way to understand the relation between the cognitive aspects of sound structure and their realization in terms of physical activity in the vocal tracts of actual speakers. The course begins by providing a theoretical understanding of language sound structure. We study how abstract sound patterns are described as a system of conflicting and universal constraints. Different hierarchical relations between the same constraints give rise to the sound patterns of different languages. The course proceeds by exploring how a linguistic message is conveyed by activity in the vocal tract. We study how humans produce the sounds of different languages in isolation and in sequences (using a research tool for visualizing articulator movement data). In the final part of the course, through a sequence of readings and presentations, students tackle issues in the relation between abstract sound patterns in a language of their choice and their realization in terms of activity in the vocal tract. The course would also involve a fieldtrip to Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, one of the world's pioneering federally funded centers for research in speech production and perception.

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