Linguistics - undergraduate program

Linguistics

[ undergraduate program | graduate program | faculty ]

All courses, faculty listings, and curricular and degree requirements described herein are subject to change or deletion without notice.

Courses

For course descriptions not found in the UC San Diego General Catalog 2019–20, please contact the department for more information.

Note: Not all courses are offered every year. It is essential that students consult the linguistics adviser when planning their degree programs.

Linguistics Lower Division

LIGN 3. Language as a Social and Cultural Phenomenon (4)

The role of language in thought, myth, ritual, advertising, politics, and the law. Language variation, change, and loss; multilingualism, pidginization and creolization; language planning, standardization, and prescriptivism; writing systems. Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 4. Language as a Cognitive System (4)

Fundamental issues in language and cognition. Differences between animal communication, sign systems, and human language; origins and evolution of language; neural basis of language; language acquisition in children and adults. Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 5. The Linguistics of Invented Languages (4)

Introduction to the study of language through the investigation of invented languages, whether conscious (Elvish, Klingon, Esperanto) or unconscious (creoles, twin/sibling languages). Students will participate in the invention of a language fragment. Topics discussed include language structure, history, culture, and writing systems. Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 7. Sign Language and Their Cultures (4)

Deaf history since the eighteenth century. The structure of American Sign Language and comparison with oral languages. ASL poetry and narrative and Deaf people’s system of cultural knowledge. Basic questions concerning the nature of language and its relation to culture. Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 8. Languages and Cultures in America (4)

Language in American culture and society. Standard and nonstandard English in school, media, pop culture, politics; bilingualism and education; cultural perception of language issues over time; languages and cultures in the “melting pot,” including Native American, Hispanic, African American, Deaf. Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 17. Making and Breaking Codes (4)

A rigorous analysis of symbolic systems and their interpretations. Students will learn to encode and decode information using progressively more sophisticated methods; topics covered include ancient and modern phonetic writing systems, hieroglyphics, computer languages, and ciphers (secret codes). Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 87. Freshman Seminar (1)

The Freshman Seminar Program is designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman Seminars are offered in all campus departments and undergraduate colleges, and topics vary from quarter to quarter. Enrollment is limited to fifteen to twenty students, with preference given to entering freshmen.

Upper Division

LIGN 101. Introduction to the Study of Language (4)

Language is what makes us human, but how does it work? This course focuses on speech sounds and sound patterns, how words are formed, organized into sentences, and understood, how language changes, and how it is learned. Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 105. Law and Language (4)

The interpretation of language in understanding the law: 1) the language of courtroom interaction (hearsay, jury instructions); 2) written legal language (contracts, ambiguity, legal fictions); 3) language-based issues in the law (First Amendment, libel and slander). Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 108. Languages of Africa (4)

Africa is home to an astonishing variety of languages. This course investigates the characteristics of the major language families as well as population movements and language contact, and how governments attempt to regulate language use. Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 110. Phonetics (4)

The study of sounds that are used in human languages. How speech sounds are physically produced; acoustics of speech; speech perception; practical training in phonetic transcription and in interpreting visual representations of the acoustic signal. The class covers both English and its dialects and languages other than English. Prerequisites: LIGN 101, concurrent enrollment in LIGN 101, or consent of instructor.

LIGN 111. Phonology I (4)

Why does one language sound different from another? This course analyzes how languages organize sounds into different patterns, how those sounds interact, and how they fit into larger units, such as syllables. Focus on a wide variety of languages and problem solving. Prerequisites: LIGN 110.

LIGN 112. Speech Sounds and Speech Disorders (4)

How do we measure differences in the way sounds are produced and perceived? This course focuses on measuring and analyzing the acoustic and auditory properties of sounds as they occur in nonpathological and pathological speech. Prerequisites: LIGN 110 or consent of instructor.

LIGN 119. First and Second Language Learning: From Childhood through Adolescence (4)

(Same as EDS 119) An examination of how human language learning ability develops and changes over the first two decades of life, including discussion of factors that may affect this ability. Prerequisites: upper-division standing or consent of instructor.

LIGN 120. Morphology (4)

How do some languages express with one word complex meanings that English needs several words to express? Discovery of underlying principles of word formation through problem solving and analysis of data from a wide variety of languages. Prerequisites: LIGN 101 or consent of instructor.

LIGN 121. Syntax I (4)

What universal principles determine how words combine into phrases and sentences? Introduction to research methods and results. Emphasis on how argumentation in problem-solving can be used in the development of theories of language. Prerequisites: LIGN 101 or consent of instructor.

LIGN 130. Semantics (4)

Introduction to the formal study of meaning. What is the meaning of a word? What is the meaning of a sentence? Which role does the context play in determining linguistic meaning? Prerequisites: LIGN 101 or consent of instructor.

LIGN 139. Field Methods (4)

Methods and practice of gathering, processing, and analyzing data based on working with a native speaker of a language. Students gain experience in learning to discriminate and transcribe sounds and analyze grammatical features from their own collected data. Ethical and practical issues of working with native speakers and language communities are addressed. May be taken for credit up to two times. Recommended preparation: LIGN 111, LIGN 120, LIGN 121. Prerequisites: LIGN 101 and LIGN 110.

LIGN 141. Language Structures (4)

Detailed investigation of the structure of one or more languages. May be repeated for credit as topics vary. Prerequisites: LIGN 101 or consent of instructor.

LIGN 143. The Structure of Spanish (4)

Surveys aspects of Spanish phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax. Topics include dialect differences between Latin American and Peninsular Spanish (both from a historical and contemporary viewpoint), gender classes, verbal morphology, and clause structure. Prerequisites: LIGN 101 or consent of instructor.

LIGN 144. Discourse Analysis: American Sign Language and Performing Arts (4)

A discourse-centered examination of ASL verbal arts: rhyme, meter, rhythm, handedness, nonmanual signals, and spatial mapping; creation of scene and mood; properties of character, dialogue, narration, and voice; cultural tropes; poetic constructions in everyday genres; transcription, body memory and performance. Prerequisites: LISL 1C/1CX or consent of instructor.

LIGN 146. Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities (4)

An examination of sociolinguistic research on Deaf communities throughout the world, including: sociohistorical contexts for phonological, lexical and syntactic variation, contact between languages, multilingualism, language policies and planning, second language learning, language attitudes, and discourse analysis of specific social contexts. Course will be conducted in ASL. Prerequisites: LISL 1C/1CX or consent of instructor.

LIGN 148. Psycholinguistics of Sign Language (4)

The study of how sign languages are structured, and how they are understood and produced by adults. Topics include the contrast between gesture and language, sign language acquisition, brain processing, sociolinguistics, and the role of sign language in reading. Prerequisites: LISL 1C/1CX or LIGN 101 or consent of instructor.

LIGN 150. Historical Linguistics (4)

Language is constantly changing. This course investigates the nature of language change, how to determine a language’s history, its relationship to other languages, and the search for common ancestors or “protolanguage.” Prerequisites: LIGN 101 or consent of instructor.

LIGN 152. Indigenous Languages of the Americas (4)

This course is an introduction to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas. Its goals are to offer orientation in a broad field and to prepare students for possible future research. Topics covered include grammatical structures, genetic classification, characteristics of major language families, and factors affecting language use and mother tongue transmission of these languages in contemporary societies. Recommended preparation: LIGN 101.

LIGN 154. Language and Consciousness (4)

Origins of linguistic analysis (phonetics, phonology, morphology, thematic and grammatical relations, lexical semantics) in ancient India, history of naturalism vs. conventionalism, sound symbolism, relationship of language with myth and ritual, linguistic relativism, physical effects of language, metaphysical approaches to language. Prerequisites: LIGN 101.

LIGN 155. Evolution of Language (4)

History of thought on language origins, genetic, neural, anatomical, and gestural theories of language evolution in relation to prior hominid and other species, the role of generational differences in language acquisition, and computational models. Prerequisites: upper-division standing or consent of instructor.

LIGN 160. Pragmatics (4)

An introduction to the context-dependent aspects of language meaning. Topics include given versus new information, Gricean maxims and rules of conversation, presupposition, implicature, reference and cognitive status, discourse coherence and structure, and speech acts. Prerequisites: LIGN 101 or consent of instructor.

LIGN 165. Computational Linguistics (4)

An introduction to the fundamental concepts of computational linguistics, in which we study natural language syntax and semantics from an interpretation perspective, describe methods for programming computer systems to perform such interpretation, and survey applications of computational linguistics technology. Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 167. Deep Learning for Natural Language Understanding (4)

An introduction to neural network methods for analyzing linguistic data. Basic neural network architectures and optimization through backpropagation and stochastic gradient descent. Word vectors and recurrent neural networks, and their uses and limitations in modeling the structure of natural language. Prerequisites: Math 10C or Math 20C or Math 31BH; ability to program.

LIGN 170. Psycholinguistics (4)

The study of how humans learn, represent, comprehend, and produce language. Topics include visual and auditory recognition of words, sentence comprehension, reading, sentence production, language acquisition, neural representation of language, bilingualism, and language disorders. Prerequisites: LIGN 101, or upper-division standing, or consent of instructor.

LIGN 171. Child Language Acquisition (4)

A central cognitive, developmental mystery is how children learn their first language. Overview of research in the learning of sound systems, word forms and word meanings, and word combinations. Exploration of the relation between cognitive and language development. Prerequisites: LIGN 101, or upper-division standing, or consent of instructor.

LIGN 174. Gender and Language in Society (4)

(Same as SOCI 116.) This course examines how language contributes to the social construction of gender identities, and how gender impacts language use and ideologies. Topics include the ways language and gender interact across the life span, within ethnolinguistic minority communities in the United States, across sexual orientations and cultures. Recommended preparation: LIGN 101, or upper-division standing, or consent of instructor.

LIGN 175. Sociolinguistics (4)

The study of language in its social context, with emphasis on the different types of linguistic variation and the principles underlying them. Dialects, registers, gender-based linguistic differences, multilingualism, pidginization and creolization, factors influencing linguistic choice, formal models of variation; emphasis is given both to socially determined differences within the United States and US ethnic groups and to cross-cultural differences in language use and variation. Prerequisites: LIGN 101 or consent of instructor.

LIGN 176. Language of Politics and Advertising (4)

How can we explain the difference between what is literally said versus what is actually conveyed in the language of law, politics, and advertising? How people’s ordinary command of language and their reasoning skills are used to manipulate them. Prerequisites: none.

LIGN 177. Multilingualism (4)

Official and minority languages, pidgins and Creoles, language planning, bilingual education and literacy, code switching, and language attrition. Prerequisites: LIGN 101, or upper-division standing, or consent of instructor.

LIGN 179. Second Language Acquisition Research (4)

This course will investigate topics in second language acquisition including the critical period, the processing and neural representation of language in bilinguals, theories of second language acquisition and creolization, exceptional language learners, and parallels with first language acquisition. Prerequisites: LIGN 101, or upper-division standing, or consent of instructor.

LIGN 180. Language Representation in the Brain (4)

The mind/body problem, modularity, basic neuroanatomy, cerebral lateralization, re-evaluation of classical language areas, aphasia, dyslexia, the KE family and FOXP2 gene, mirror neurons, sign language, brain development, cortical plasticity, and localization studies of language processing (electrical stimulation, MEG, fMRI, and PET). Students may not receive credit for both LIGN 172 and LIGN 180. Prerequisites: LIGN 101, or upper-division standing, or consent of instructor.

LIGN 181. Language Processing in the Brain (4)

Modularity and models of language processing, basic neurophysiology, EEG/MEG, linguistic event-related brain potentials (ERPs), crosslinguistic functional significance of ERP components and their MEG correlates: N400, N400-700, lexical processing negativity, slow anterior negative potentials, (early) left anterior negativity, and late positivity. Prerequisites: LIGN 101, or upper-division standing, or consent of instructor.

LIGN 192. Senior Seminar in Linguistics (1)

The Senior Seminar Program is designed to allow senior undergraduates to meet with faculty members in a small group setting to explore an intellectual topic in linguistics (at the upper-division level). Senior Seminars may be offered in all campus departments. Topics will vary from quarter to quarter. Senior Seminars may be taken for credit up to four times, with a change in topic, and permission of the department. Enrollment is limited to twenty students, with preference given to seniors. Prerequisites: department stamp and/or consent of instructor.

LIGN 195. Apprentice Teaching (0–4)

Students lead a class section of a lower-division linguistics course. They also attend a weekly meeting on teaching methods. (This course does not count toward minor or major.) May be repeated for credit, up to a maximum of four units. (P/NP grades only.) Prerequisites: consent of instructor, advanced standing.

LIGN 197. Linguistics Internship (2 or 4)

The student will undertake a program of practical research in a supervised work environment. Topics to be researched may vary, but in each case the course will provide skills for carrying out these studies. Prerequisites: consent of instructor.

LIGN 199. Independent Study in Linguistics (2 or 4)

The student undertakes a program of research or advanced reading in linguistics under the supervision of a faculty member of the Department of Linguistics. (P/NP grades only.) Prerequisites: consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit.

LIGN 199H. Honors Independent Study in Linguistics (4)

The student undertakes a program of research and advanced reading in linguistics under the supervision of a faculty member in the Department of Linguistics. (P/NP grades only.) Prerequisites: admission to Honors Program.

Graduate

LIGN 200. Research Forum (2)

A forum for discussion of current issues. (S/U grades only.) May be repeated for credit.

LIGN 210. Phonetics (4)

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This is an introduction to articulatory, acoustic, and auditory phonetics. Major phonetic theories in these areas, and the relationship between phonetics and phonology are discussed aduate students preparing to fulfill...