Fall 2024
LING 1000: Language in U.S. Society
Instructor: Chase Raymond
Humans use language as part of almost everything we do in social life. Whether it鈥檚 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.听
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 鈥榮hould鈥� 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鈥攕pecifically 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.听
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. Recitation sections will still have weekly in-person meetings.听
Instructor: Kate Arnold-Murray (Continuing Education)
Humans use language as part of almost everything we do in social life. Whether it鈥檚 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 鈥榮hould鈥� 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鈥攕pecifically 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:听Languages of the World
Instructor:听Aous Mansouri
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: Natalie Grothues (Continuing Education)
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鈥檚 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鈥� 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:听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. 听The Literacy Practicum program pairs CU Boulder undergraduate student volunteers as 鈥淏uff Buddies鈥� with language and literacy learners of all ages in the Boulder community. 听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鈥� 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 baby直播app and graduate-student program directors and are required to write 3 informal blog posts about their experiences over the course of the semester. 听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 鈥渉ow does language work,鈥� in all of its variation and complexity? You will learn what one needs to 鈥渒now鈥� 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鈥檚 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: Maureen Kosse
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鈥檚 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鈥檚 postmillennial generation, a phenomenon (controversially) discussed by a growing number of researchers as 鈥渇ourth wave feminism.鈥� 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.
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.
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LING 3100:听Language Sound Structures
Instructor: Andy Ting
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.
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?
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 3220:听American Indigenous Languages in the Social and Cultural Context
Instructor: Ambrocio Guti茅rrez 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 鈥� 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:听Semantics
Instructor:听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.
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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. It is the same as LING 5200, with different grading standards on the homework assignments and different options for final projects.听
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
- Natural Language Tool Kit
Recommended prerequisites are LING 1200, CSCI 1200, CSCI 1300 or equivalent.
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
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. 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:听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.
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LING 5420:听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鈥檚 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:听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鈥檚 languages? What happens when languages are in contact? How does language change impact the typological patterns we find in the world鈥檚 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 7415/7425: Cognitive Science Research 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. Department enforced prerequisites: or or or or . Recommended prerequisite: . Same as and and and and
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. Same as and and and and .
LING 7420: Syntactic Theory
Instructor: Laura A. 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鈥攁nd, 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.听(Kay 1992: 310)
In this class, we will explore the theory and practice of Construction Grammar (CxG). In CxG the grammar is 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). CxG 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, 鈥榮now clones鈥� (e.g., This is your brain on x) and formal idioms like the 鈥檛he Xer, the Yer鈥�. We will explore the use of CxG to describe linguistic innovations, including both novel constructions and novel construction-word combinations.听
Work expectations include leading 1-2 class discussions, turning in a couple of problem sets and writing a corpus-based case study of your adopted idiom. 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听Explain me this听by Adele Goldberg (Princeton UP; 2018). We will draw upon a 鈥榤aster construction list鈥� of about 100 English constructions, which we will augment as the semester proceeds.听
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.