Lower Division Courses: Subject to Term Availability
LING 100: Communication and Language
Explores the foundations of human language from a variety of perspectives. Young children acquire language effortlessly. How is this possible, and why is it so much more challenging to learn a new language later in life? How does the human brain use complex grammatical systems to communicate? Students will learn new ways to think critically about language and communication. Open to all students. Breadth-Social Sciences.
LING 111: The Wonder of Words
Introduces students to theories about words and vocabulary. Explores topics such as the roots of the English vocabulary, how we create new words and how we learn them. Also discusses practical applications such as constructed languages for use in science fiction, and word recognition in artificial intelligence. Open to all students. Students with credit for LING 110 may not take this course for further credit. Breadth-Social Sciences.
LING 160: Language, Culture and Society
Examines the relationship between language use and social structure. Considers how social factors such as gender, class, age, and ethnicity may be reflected in language use, as well as "big picture" topics that include multilingualism, dialect variation, language policy and linguistic stereotypes. Encourages students to think critically about the social dimensions of language. Open to all students. Breadth-Social Sciences.
LING 190: The Science of Speech
Introduces the scientific study of speech, focusing on the mechanisms of speech production and perception, the ways in which speech is described and analyzed, the relationship between speech and technology, and the practical applications of phonetic science. Open to all students. Breadth-Social Sci/Science.
LING 200: Foundations of English Grammar
Provides a practical overview of English grammar based on linguistic principles. Explores fundamentals of English sentence structure, grammatical categories and grammatical analysis through lectures and hands-on work in the classroom. Develops skills that are applicable in language analysis, writing and communication. Open to all students.
LING 220: Introduction to Linguistics
Explores how language works. Introduces students to the systematic nature of language by exploring the patterns of sounds, words, sentences and meanings in English and other languages. Develops problem-solving and critical thinking skills through hands-on training in pattern recognition and language data analysis. Open to all students. Breadth-Social Sciences.
LING 250: Computational Text Analysis
Introduces basics of text analysis through Python programming. Core concepts include: data capture and manipulation; data cleaning and preprocessing; database management; big data; natural language processing; introductory machine learning; text classification. Students with credit for SDA 250 may not take this course for further credit.
LING 280: Linguistics in the Real World
Examines 鈥渞eal-world鈥� issues from a linguistic perspective. Topics may range across a wide spectrum: in-depth analysis of specific languages, social issues (stereotypes, inequality), business matters (linguistics in advertising, legal language), the role of linguistics in the technology sector, as well as more general workplace applications for linguistics. As topics examined may vary by term, this course may be repeated once for credit if the topic is different. Open to all students.
LING 282W: Writing for Linguistics
Develops skills in language analysis by focusing on reading and writing of linguistic argumentation. Explores the foundations of such argumentation in the core areas of linguistics. Students read and discuss primary literature in linguistics in order to understand how to formulate hypotheses and evaluate them. They also learn how to use writing to construct their own solutions to challenging linguistic problems. Prerequisite: LING 220. Writing.