Linguistics

370 Temple, Rm 204, 432.2450
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair
Stephen Anderson

Director of Graduate Studies
Louis Goldstein (370 Temple St., Rm 312, 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

Associate Professor
Dianne Jonas

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

Lecturer
Julie Ann Legate

Lector
Seema Khurana

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: By the end of the second year, students must demonstrate knowledge of two research languages, either by passing a translation examination in the language, or by presenting a piece of research which relies in significant part on sources in the foreign language. A one-term language description course, a field methods course, or a course in the structure of a non-Indo-European language is also required.

Course Requirements: Sixteen term courses at the graduate level. Required courses in syntax, phonology, phonetics, morphology, semantics, and historical linguistics will be taken during the first two years. Remaining course work during the first two years in residence will be selected so as to prepare the student in some substantial subfield of linguistics.

Program Requirements: At the end of the second year, each student will take an examination in some subfield of linguistics and also present samples of work demonstrating knowledge of the core areas of the field: syntax, phonology, and historical linguistics. By the end of the third year, the student should have presented two substantial research papers of publishable quality in different areas of linguistics. By the end of the seventh semester, students should have defended a dissertation prospectus.

Dissertation Requirements: Students are expected to complete their dissertations by the end of the sixth year. A dissertation defense is required after submission.

Teaching Fellow and Research Assistantship Requirements: Teaching experience is regarded as an integral part of the graduate training program in Linguistics. All students are required to serve as Teaching Fellows for a minimum of two terms, usually in the third or fourth years of study. Two additional terms of assistantship are also required, either in the form of additional participation in the Teaching Fellow Program, through participation in externally supported, supervised research (e.g., NSF Fellowship), or by serving as an assistant on a research project. Research assistantships are provided by the Linguistics faculty (e.g., from research grants) and by various Yale and Yale-affiliated units. Before accepting a research assistantship in fulfillment of the academic requirement, students must receive approval from the director of graduate studies. To be approved, an assistantship must meet the following criteria: (1) It must be under the supervision of a departmental faculty member or faculty at an affiliated unit, such as the Haskins Laboratories or the Yale School of Medicine. (2) It must provide research experiences that complement the student’s academic plan of study. (3) It must provide at least 10 hours of experience per week. If a research assistantship is accepted in fulfillment of the department’s academic requirement and if the assistantship provides a stipend less than the standard departmental stipend, a University Fellowship will be provided to bring the combined stipends up to the standard departmental stipend.

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. MWF 10.30–11.20
The goals and methods of linguistics. Basic concepts in phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Techniques of linguistic analysis and construction of linguistic models. Trends in modern linguistics. The relations of linguistics to psychology, logic, and other disciplines.

LING 512bu, Historical Linguistics.  Stanley Insler. MW 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.]  

[LING 515u, Elementary Sanskrit.]  

LING 517au, Language and Mind.  Maria Piñango. TTh 11.30–12.45
Knowledge of language as a component of the mind: mental grammars, the nature and subdivisions of linguistic knowledge in connection to the brain. 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. MW 2.30–3.45
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 532au, Introduction to Phonological Analysis.  Darya Kavitskaya. TTh 1–2.15
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 II.  Stephen Anderson. MW 2.30–3.45
Topics in the architecture of a theory of sound structure. Levels of representation; classical phonological rules and their interaction. Ordering paradoxes; cyclicity and Lexical Phonology. Motivations for replacing a system of rules with a system of constraints. Optimality theory: constraint types and their interactions. Correspondence theory. Opacity and stratal OT. Prerequisite: LING 532a or permission of instructor.

[LING 541bu, Language and Computation.]  

LING 553au, Syntax I.  Julie Ann Legate. MW 11.30–12.45, 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. TTh 11.30–12.45
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. TTh 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 565au, Development of Phonology.  Louis Goldstein. TTh 4–5.15
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.

LING 580bu, Morphology.  Maria Piñango. TTh 11.30–12.45
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 602bu, Comparative Old Germanic.]  

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

[LING 624au, Formal Foundations of Linguistic Theories.]  

LING 631au, Neurolinguistics.  Maria Piñango. TTh 2.30–3.45
The role of linguistic theory in understanding language-brain relations. The role of neurolinguistic evidence (aphasia, neuroimaging) in understanding language knowledge.

LING 636bu, Articulatory Phonology.  Louis Goldstein. TTh 4–5.15
Introduction to phonology as a system for combining units of speech (constriction gestures of the vocal organs) into larger structures. Course includes both theory (reading) and practice (analysis of articulatory movement data; modeling using techniques of dynamical systems). Emphasis on universal vs. language-particular aspects of gestural combination and coordination.

LING 640au, Topics in Phonology: Sound Change.  Stephen Anderson. W 1.30–3.20
Discussion of the phonetic, phonological, and morphological bases of the traditional category of Sound Change (and its antagonist, Analogy), with the goal of understanding how this basic construct of historical linguistics should be understood within current linguistic theory. Prerequisites: LING 512b, 520a, 532a, 535b, or equivalents.

[LING 641au, Field Methods.]  

LING 642bu, Topics in Phonology: Lenition and Fortition.  Darya Kavitskaya. T 1.30–3.20
Phonology and phonetics of processes affecting consonantal strength, such as voicing alternations, (de)gemination, consonant gradation; their connection with syllable structure, prosody, and phonotactics; weakening and strengthening as sound change.

LING 647bu, Structure of Swahili.  Ann Biersteker. TTh 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 649bu, Structure of Korean.  Seungja Choi. TTh 9–10.15
Study of the core grammatical structure of Korean. Topics include word order, case markers, nominalizers, the postpositional marker nun, and five sentence structures in which nun appears: generic, topic-comment, contrastive, logophoric, and negative sentences.

LING 650b, Structure of Warlpiri.  Julie Ann Legate. MW 11.30–12.45

LING 654bu, Syntax II.  Maria Babyonyshev. TTh 1–2.15
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. MW 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 roles (theta-roles). Grammatical relations in typological and historical perspectives. Prerequisite: 553a or permission of instructor.

LING 660bu, Topics in Syntax: The Mental Lexicon.  Maria Piñango. Th 1.30–3.20
A discussion of 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, as well as lesion and imaging studies. Also PSYC 650bu.

[LING 661bu, Topics in Syntax: Celtic Syntax.]  

LING 662au, Topics in Syntax: Bilingualism.  Maria Babyonyshev. Th 9.30–11.20
An investigation of the interactions between the two grammars of a bilingual speaker. Topics include transfer, first language attrition, and code-switching. Focus on the implications of these processes for syntactic theory. Prerequisite: one course in syntax or permission of instructor. Also PSYC 649au.

LING 663au, Semantics.  Laurence Horn. TTh 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 relations between semantics and pragmatics, and between semantics and syntax.

LING 675bu, Pragmatics.  Laurence Horn. TTh 2.30–3.45
Linguistic acts and the context in which they are performed. Implicature, presupposition, and speech act theory. Role of pragmatics in lexical choice and lexical change.

LING 680au, Topics in Morphology: Clitics.   Stephen Anderson. M 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 720bu, Basics of Digital Signal Processing and Speech Acoustics.]  

INDC 751b, Indian Grammarians.  Stanley Insler. T 1.30–3.20
Introduction to the grammar of Panini and the native Indian grammatical tradition. Readings from Mahabhasya and the Kasika. Prerequisite: one term of Sanskrit.

[LING 760b, Seminar in Information Structure.]  

[LING 761a, Seminar in Argument Structure.]  

[LING 770a, Learnability and Development.]

[LING 771a, Language Creation and Language Change.]  

LING 777b, Current Research in Phonetics.  Louis Goldstein. W 2.30–4.20
Intensive discussion of selected research topics in phonetics, primarily in the areas of gestural structure and coordination, dynamical modeling, and articulatory-acoustic relations. Experimental, analytical, and simulation methods are evaluated. Students are expected to have ongoing research projects and to present regular reports on their progress.

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.  Seema Khurana. TTh 1–2.15, W 4–5.15, 1 HTBA
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.  Seema Khurana. TTh 11.30–12.45, W 2.30–3.45, 1 HTBA
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 515 or satisfactory placement test.

HNDI 557bu, Topics in Hindi Literature: Diaspora Literature.  Seema Khurana. TTh 4–5.15, W 1 HTBA
An advanced language course designed to develop overall language skills through selected readings of Hindi literature and the study of popular culture of the Indian diaspora. Focus on the works of Suaham Bedi, Sunita Jain, Umes Agnihotri, etc.; various art forms including theater and films; debates informing the political, social, and cultural dimensions as found in news articles and television programs.

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

ANTH 513bu, Language, Culture, and Ideology.  J. Joseph Errington.

ANTH 533au, Bilingualism in Social Context.  J. Joseph Errington.

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

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