Linguistics

318 Hall of Graduate Studies, 432.2450
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair
Stephen Anderson

Director of Graduate Studies
Louis Goldstein (320 HGS, 432.2453, louis.goldstein@yale.edu)

Professors
Stephen Anderson, Paul Bloom, Carol Fowler (Adjunct), Roberta Frank, Louis Goldstein, Laurence Horn, Stanley Insler, Frank Keil, Hugh Stimson

Assistant Professors
Maria Babyonyshev, Dianne Jonas, Darya Kavitskaya, Maria Piñango, Charles Yang

Director, African Language Program
Ann Biersteker

Director, Center for Language Study
Nina Garrett

Supporting Faculty in Other Departments
Stephen Colvin (Classics), J. Joseph Errington (Anthropology), William Hallo (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations)

Fields of Study
Fields include linguistic theory (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), experimental phonetics, brain and language, language and cognition, Indo-European, Germanic linguistics, and African linguistics.

Special Admissions Requirements
Two terms of two ancient Indo-European languages, preferably Latin and Greek, are required for the Indo-European program. Two years of intensive study or equivalent are required for the Japanese linguistics program.

Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
Language requirements: Students must demonstrate a reading knowledge of two research languages by passing translation examinations, one by the end of the first year and the other by the end of the second year. Students must also satisfy a non-Indo-European language requirement by taking a language description course, a field methods course or one-term course in the structure of a non-I-E language. Predissertation requirements include (1) the submission and oral defense of two qualifying research papers and (2) the submission and oral defense of a dissertation prospectus. Students must fulfill these requirements by the end of their seventh term. At that time they will be admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. Students are expected to complete their dissertations by the end of their sixth year of study. Course requirements: sixteen term courses at graduate level, depending on undergraduate background. Detailed requirements for different programs are given in the departmental brochure. At the end of the first year of study, students must take a preliminary comprehensive examination to demonstrate a basic grounding in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax/semantics, and historical linguistics. Satisfactory performance on the exam and in the first-year courses is necessary for continuation in the doctoral program. Defense of dissertation required after submission.

Master's Degrees
M.Phil. See Graduate School requirements.

M.A. (en route to the Ph.D.). Students in the doctoral program who successfully complete one year of course work and pass the preliminary examination and one research language exam may petition for an M.A. degree.

Program materials are available upon request to the Department of Linguistics, Yale University, PO Box 208236, New Haven CT 06520-8236.

Courses
LING 510bu, Introduction to Linguistics. Darya Kavitskaya. Mon/Wed/Fri 10.30-11.20
The goals and methods of linguistics. The relation of linguistics to psychology, logic, and other disciplines. Basic concepts in phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Techniques of linguistic analysis and construction of linguistic models. Trends in modern linguistics.

LING 512bu, Historical Linguistics. Dianne Jonas. Mon/Wed 1-2.15, 1 htba
Types of change that a language undergoes in the course of time: sound change, analogy, syntactic and semantic change, borrowing. Techniques for recovering earlier linguistic stages: philology, internal reconstruction, the comparative method. Language change and linguistic theory.

LING 513au, Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics. Stanley Insler. Tuesday 1.30-3.20
Location in space and time of the major branches of Indo-European; history of Indo- European studies, especially the development of methodology; sketch of the phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon of proto-Indo-European, with main developments of these in the daughter languages.

[LING 515u, Elementary Sanskrit.]

LING 516bu, Elementary Hittite. Stanley Insler. Tuesday 1.30-3.20
Introduction to the Hittite language. Explanation of grammar, with readings in transcription from old, middle, and new Hittite texts representing different literary genres. No knowledge of cuneiform is necessary, but familiarity with an inflected language (Latin, Greek, German, Russian) is essential.

LING 517au, Language and Mind. Maria Piñango. Tues/Thurs 11.30-12.45
Knowledge of language as a component of the mind: mental grammars, the nature and subdivisions of linguistic knowledge. The logical problem of language acquisition. The "universal grammar hypothesis," according to which all humans have an innate ability to acquire language. The connection between language acquisition and general cognitive abilities. Representation of language in the brain. Use of linguistic knowledge in speaking: processing. Comparison between human spoken natural language and other systems (signed languages; nonhuman communication).

LING 520au, General Phonetics. Louis Goldstein. Mon/Wed 1-2.15
Investigation of possible ways of describing the speech sounds of human languages. Tools to be developed: acoustics and physiology of speech; computer synthesis of speech; practical exercises in producing and transcribing sounds.

LING 524au, Formal Foundations of Linguistic Theories. Charles Yang. Mon/Wed 11.30-12.45
Mathematical methods in linguistics. Topics include: set theory, logic and formal systems, model theory, lambda calculus, formal language theory, elementary statistics, and probability. No prerequisites.

LING 532au, Introduction to Phonological Analysis. Darya Kavitskaya. Tues/Thurs 4-5.15
The structure of sound systems in particular languages. Phonemic and morphophonemic analysis, distinctive-feature theory, formulation of rules, and problems of rule interpretation. Emphasis on problem solving.

LING 535bu, Phonological Theory. Stephen Anderson. Mon/Wed 2.30-3.45
Advanced topics in current phonological theory. Reading and discussion of recent papers in nonlinear phonology. Topics include feature theory, feature geometry, constraints on representations, cyclicity, harmony systems, syllable structure, stress systems, the interaction of morphology and phonology, lexical phonology.

LING 541bu, Language and Computation. Charles Yang. Tues/Thurs 1-2.15
The computational study of natural language and the use of linguistic theories in applied problems. Topics include finite state tools, computational morphology and phonology, grammar and parsing, discourse models, machine translation, and language learning in children and machines. Prerequisite: LING 524 or CPSC 201a/b.

LING 542bu, Statistical Natural Language Processing. Charles Yang. Tues/Thurs 9-10.15
Application of statistical techniques in natural language processing, with an emphasis on speech recognition and probabilistic language modeling. Topics include introductory statistics, information theory, signal representation, acoustic modeling, stochastic algorithms for speech recognition, computational processing of linguistic corpora, and stochastic grammars. Prerequisite: LING 524 or CPSC 201a/b.

[LING 546bu, Language, Sex, and Gender.]

LING 553au, Syntax I: Introduction to Transformational Grammar. Dianne Jonas. Mon/Wed 2.30-3.45, 1 htba
Introduction to generative syntactic theory and argumentation. Phrase-structure analysis, constituent structure, motivation for syntactic transformations, constraints on rule application, and conditions on representations.

LING 561au, Introduction to Psycholinguistics. Maria Babyonyshev. Tues/Thurs 1-2.15
The course covers central topics in three major areas of psycholinguistic research: language acquisition, language impairment, and real-time processing. The emphasis is on the relevance of this research to the study of the human mind and on the importance of theoretical linguistics as a tool of psycholinguistic investigation.

LING 563bu, Language Acquisition. Maria Babyonyshev. Tues/Thurs 11.30-12.45
Language learnability. Acquisition of the lexicon. Development of syntactic knowledge. Parameter-setting model of language acquisition and maturation. Experimental methods in developmental psycholinguistics.

LING 565bu, Development of Phonology. Louis Goldstein. Mon/Wed 11.30-12.45
The growth of phonology in infants and young children and the principles guiding this growth. Topics include the innate sensorimotor link and imitation; articulatory gestures as primitives of the phonological system; phonology as a system for combining gestures into coordinated structures; parallels to self-organization in other combinatoric systems; the role of universal principles, language-particular tuning, and the developing lexicon in the emergence of phonological structures. Prerequisite: permission of instructor.

LING 580bu, Morphology. Maria Piñango. Mon/Wed 9-10.15
The theory of word structure within a formal grammar. Relation to other areas of grammar (syntax, phonology); basic units of word structure; types of morphology (inflection, derivation, compounding).

LING 582au, Introduction to Old Norse. Dianne Jonas. Mon/Wed 11.30-12.45
Introduction to Old Norse through a close study of Old Icelandic. Emphasis on all aspects of the grammar of Old Icelandic: phonology, morphology, and syntax. Focus on the development of reading proficiency through a close reading of Hrafnkel's Saga.

LING 583bu, Readings in Old Norse Poetry and Prose: Chronicles of the Vikings. Roberta Frank. Mon/Wed 11.30-12.45
An introduction to the literature of earliest Norway and Iceland. Texts (to be read in the original) include runic inscriptions left behind by the Vikings, verse of their official skalds, the sometimes irreverent mythological poetry of the Edda, and the sagas telling of the Norse discovery of America. Prerequisite: LING 582a or permission of the instructor. Also ENGL 505bu.

LING 590au, Topics in the History of Linguistics. Stephen Anderson. Tues/Thurs 4-5.15
Topics in the history of the science of language. Focus and prerequisites may vary from one offering to another. Development may vary from one offering to another. Topic for fall 2001: development of twentieth-century phonological theory from deSaussure and Baudouin de Courtenay to contemporary work.

[LING 593au, Historical Morphology.]

[LING 621bu, The Relation of Speech to Language.]

[LING 622bu, Topics in Phonetics.]

[LING 623b, Research Methods in Psycholinguistics.]

LING 625, Second-Year Sanskrit. Stanley Insler. Wednesday 3.30-5.20
Introduction to the hymns and language of the Rigveda. Concentration on a study of the language of this text as an ancient but developing system whose growth reaches its high point in the later Vedic texts. Extensive discussion of the techniques of composition of the individual hymns through internal comparison.

LING 627, Sanskrit Legal Texts. Stanley Insler.
Close reading and comparison of Sanskrit legal texts representing various literary sources.

LING 630a, Speech Production. Louis Goldstein. Thursday 1.30-3.20
When we speak, the vocal tract articulators engage in a smooth and intricate dance that carries the linguistic information of our utterances. In this seminar, we review current research that attempts to isolate the principles that underlie the form of this dance and its information-bearing function. Topics include: analysis of the dance into informational units (gestures), general theories of coordinated movement, self-organization in complex systems, cognitive processes that select the appropriate dance for an intended lexical item.

LING 631bu, Neurolinguistics. Maria Piñango. Mon/Wed 1-2.15
Linguistic analyses of language impairment. Historical development of views of aphasia. The role of linguistic theory in understanding language loss.

LING 640bu, Topics in Phonology: Phonetic and Phonological Components of Syllable Weight. Darya Kavitskaya. Thursday 9.30-11.20
Phonetic and phonological components of syllable weight. Issues of phonological representation vs. phonetic duration. Prosodic phenomena sensitive to weight, compensatory lengthening, minimal word requirements, stress and metrical theory.

LING 647bu, Structure of Swahili. Ann Biersteker. Tues/Thurs 4-5.15
Study of Swahili grammar. Phonology, morphology, and syntax of Swahili examined in detail. Topics also include Swahili dialects, history of Swahili, and comparison with other Bantu languages. Also AFST 647bu.

LING 654bu, Syntax II. Maria Babyonyshev. Tues/Thurs 2.30-3.45
Recent developments in syntactic theory: Government and Binding, Principles and Parameters, and Minimalist frameworks. In-depth examination of the basic modules of grammar (lexicon, X-bar theory, theta-theory, case theory, movement theory). Comparison and critical evaluation of specific syntactic analyses.

LING 656bu, Grammatical Relations. Laurence Horn. Tues/Thurs 1-2.15
Descriptive and theoretical approaches to grammatical relations (subject, object, etc.) and their role in syntax, argument structure, and universal grammar. Comparison of diverse models: traditional approaches, case grammar, relational grammar, lexical-functional grammar, GB and its developments. Grammatical relations and thematic relations (theta-roles). Grammatical relations in typological and historical perspectives.

LING 660au, Topics in Syntax: The Mental Lexicon. Maria Piñango. Tuesday 2.30-4.20
The seminar discusses theories of real-time language comprehension and how they interact with theories of linguistic representation. It focuses on computational and representational models of the mental lexicon which are evaluated in the context of online processing evidence, and lesion and imaging studies.

LING 661bu, Topics in Syntax: Minimalism. Dianne Jonas. Tuesday 9.30-11.20
Introduction to minimalist syntax and comparison with earlier theories. Topics include grammatical operations, clause structure, and close study of recent minimalist analyses. Prerequisite: two courses in syntax or permission of the instructor.

LING 662au, Topics in Syntax: Discourse-Motivated Movement. Maria Babyonyshev. Thursday 3.30-5.20
The properties and distribution of topicalized and focused elements. Optional movement operations and the problems they pose for syntactic theory. Recent treatments of discourse-motivated movement. Focus on Slavic and East Asian languages. Prerequisites: two courses in syntax or permission of instructor.

LING 663bu, Semantics. Thomas Horn. Tues/Thurs 2.30-3.45
Lexical and truth-conditional semantics. Word meaning and semantic roles. Survey of propositional, predicate, and modal logic. Compositional theories of sense and reference. Opacity, intentionality, and belief contexts; entailment and presupposition. The relation between semantics and pragmatics, and between semantics and syntax.

[LING 675au, Pragmatics.]

LING 676bu, Implicature and Pragmatic Theory. Laurence Horn. Monday 1.30-3.20
Approaches to nonlogical inference and its interaction with propositional content. What is said vs. what is implicated: neo-Gricean vs. post-Gricean (Relevance Theory) traditions. Relation of implicature to truth conditions, syntax, and the lexicon. Implicature, abductive reasoning, and nonmonotonic logics. Prerequisite: one course in semantics or pragmatics, or permission of instructor.

LING 680au, Topics in Morphology: Clitics. Stephen Anderson. Monday 1.30-3.20
The analysis of clitics within a formal theory of grammar. Phonological vs. morphosyntactic dimensions of clitic structure ("simple" vs. "special" clitic status). Prosodic and segmental correlates of clitic elements. The adequacy of syntactic mechanisms for describing the grammar of clitics. Rules vs. constraints in the description of clitic positioning. Extensions of the analysis of clitics to other phenomena, especially Verb-second. Prerequisites: LING 532au, 553au, 580bu, or permission of instructor.

[LING 690bu, Negation and Polarity.]

LING 720bu, Basics of Digital Signal Processing and Speech Acoustics. Louis Goldstein. Wednesday 3.30-5.20
A gentle introduction to concepts of digital signal processing for those without strong mathematics, engineering, or programming backgrounds. Application to techniques for acoustic analysis and synthesis of speech. Vocal tract acoustics. Course is taught through regular programming exercises in MATLAB, but no prior programming experience is assumed.

[LING 730a, Topics in Slavic Linguistics.]

[LING 740a, Articulatory Phonology.]

[INDC 751b, Indian Grammarians.]

[LING 760b, Informatics Seminar.]

LING 770a, Learnability and Development. Charles Yang. Tuesday 9.30-11.20
An interdisciplinary investigation of child language from an integrated perspective of computational learning and quantitative language development. Topics include: formal learnability, development of prosody, the past tense debate, bootstrapping in lexical acquisition, variations in child syntax, language change, and language evolution. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.

LING 830a or b, Directed Research in Linguistics.
By arrangement with faculty.

LING 831a or b, Directed Research in Phonetics.
By arrangement with faculty.

LING 840a or b, Directed Research in Phonology.
By arrangement with faculty.

LING 850a or b, Directed Research in Grammar.
By arrangement with faculty.

LING 860a or b, Directed Research in Semantics.
By arrangement with faculty.

HNDI 515u, Elementary Hindi. Staff.
An in-depth introduction to modern Hindi including the Devanagari script. Through a combination of graded texts, written assignments, audiovisual material, and computer-based exercises, this course provides cultural insights and is geared toward increasing proficiency in understanding, speaking, reading, and writing Hindi. Emphasis is placed on spontaneous self-expression in the language.

HNDI 530u, Intermediate and Advanced Hindi. Staff.
Through extensive use of cultural documents including feature films, radio broadcasts, as well as graded literary and nonliterary texts, this course continues to build students' proficiency in understanding, speaking, reading, and writing Hindi. Provides a space for meaningful interaction with authentic materials and their related cultures. Furthers the student's appreciation of cultural nuances. Introduces various Hindi literary traditions in the second half of the course. Prepares the student for further academic and nonacademic use of Hindi. Emphasis is placed on spontaneous self-expression in the language. After HNDI 115 or satisfactory placement test.

HNDI 557bu, Modern Hindi Literature and Popular Culture. Staff.
An advanced language course designed to further develop the student's overall language skills through exposure to selected modern Hindi literature and popular culture. Focus on the works of Premchand, Manto, and Chugtai; various art forms including theater and film; debates informing the political, social, and cultural dimensions of the parent and related cultures as found in newspaper articles and television news reports. After HNDI 130 or satisfactory placement test.

The following courses are also of particular value to students in Linguistics:

ANTH 513au, Language, Culture, and Ideology. J. Joseph Errington.
See description under Anthropology.

[ANTH 533au, Bilingualism in Social Context.]

[ANTH 669au, Language, Nationalism, and Ideology.]

PHIL 643bu, Formal Semantics. Sun-Joo Shin.
See description under Philosophy.

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