Survey of major areas of linguistics: sound systems, grammatical structures, historical development of languages, language families and linguistic universals, dialect differences and their social significance.

An interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary introduction to the manifold aspects of language.

An introduction to the study of culture through communication and the theory of signs.

Explores the language families of the world. Considers such questions as: what does it mean for languages to be related, and how do we know that they are related in the first place; why are there only a handful of language families in Europe and Africa while there are scores in South America and New Guinea; What can we say about where a language or language family may have originated; and how much living history is being lost as languages become endangered or extinct when people stop speaking them?

Explores how language, a faculty that arises in the brain, is expressed by the body, both for spoken languages (via the vocal tract) and for signed languages (via the hands and face). Also includes an examination of how language, a special cognitive faculty unique to humans, intersects and overlaps with other communication systems, with a focus on gesture, the nonlinguistic communicative systems used by humans and some nonhuman species.

Examine a conceptual, non-programming overview of how computers learn, understand, and generate human language, including text encoding, machine learning, language modeling, and text generation. Study what makes human language difficult for computers, how these challenges are overcome, and implications for society. Engage in quantitative reasoning; technical background not required.

Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the encoding and decoding of speech.

This course is used to record credit the student earns while enrolled at another institution in a program administered by the University's Study Abroad Office. Credit is recorded as assigned by the study abroad adviser in the Department of Linguistics. University credit is awarded for work in an exchange program; it may be counted as coursework taken in residence. Transfer credit is awarded for work in an affiliated studies program.

An overview of the historical development of English in the Americas. Attention to regional, social, and ethnic differences, and their implications for public education.

An account of the spread of English around the world; national, social, and regional varieties.

This course is used to record credit the student earns while enrolled at another institution in a program administered by the University's Study Abroad Office. Credit is recorded as assigned by the study abroad adviser in the Department of Linguistics. University credit is awarded for work in an exchange program; it may be counted as coursework taken in residence. Transfer credit is awarded for work in an affiliated studies program.

Articulation and transcription of speech sounds; distinctive feature systems; physiological and acoustical aspects of phonetics; common phonological processes.

Introduction to the study of how languages change and the principles developed by linguists to account for these changes. Investigation of the various domains in which change occurs, and the social and linguistic motivations for change. Examines the methods linguists use to determine the earlier profile of a language or its parent language, before identified changes occurred.

Explores how different speakers of the same language differ in their pronunciation, according to regional and social groupings. Acoustic analysis of English speakers will provide the basis of an inquiry into how and why accents differ.

Nontechnical examination of social, educational, and political problems to which current linguistic knowledge is relevant.

Practical introduction to language documentation and preservation. Subjects include language diversity and practical methods for describing, documenting, and preserving languages, with an emphasis on the phonological and morphological analysis of restricted data sets, as well as the role of linguists in conjunction with communities of speakers who wish to document or revitalize their languages.

An overview of the main empirical findings on talker-, listener-, and signal-related factors that shape speech intelligibility, the degree to which spoken language can be comprehended. Explores how signal-related (physical), peripheral (auditory-perceptual), and system-related (mental) factors condition variation in both the production and perception of intelligible speech. Also examines how variation in intelligibility conditions different levels of spoken language processing and different tasks that the listener is performing during spoken language comprehension.

Introduction to statistical concepts and analyses via language problems and linguistic data sets.

Studies methods for automatically learning and analyzing word meanings and sentence meanings. Encompasses vector space models as well as logic-based semantics.

Areas in language and linguistics that most directly impact people, such as language and ethnicity, language and nation-building, and language politics.

Examines various aspects of languages in the Americas, including their linguistic structures, the cultural domains in which they exist, and their histories of language contact and change.

Explore the neuroanatomical and functional operations of the major brain structures that underlie speech/language. Examine hemispheric dominance for language, neurological and language breakdowns in aphasia, and brain imaging methods and studies of language representation.

Introduction to the history and evolution of the Chinese writing system and language. No background in Chinese language, culture, or linguistics is required.

Examine how linguistic practices of (im)politeness and verbal aggression shape--and are shaped by--social hierarchies, cultural contexts, and political dynamics across different contexts, from liberal to anti-liberal. Analyze how seemingly neutral concepts of "civility" and appropriate speech" often mask power relations while exploring how taboo language, conflict talk, and transgressive communication can both challenge and reinforce existing social orders.

Investigate the central importance of language to the formation of people's regional, social class, gender, ethnic, and age identities through psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, sociophonetics, and popular media sources. Examine how socially driven spoken language variation is created and how it is perceived.

Explore the richly documented linguistic and literary history of languages in the Indian subcontinent, paying attention to linguistic phenomena, contact effects, and language-based movements.

The evolution of the culture and language of German immigrants to Texas from the 1840s through the present and how they have influenced other ethnic groups in Texas.

Study the relation between language and thought, using a cognitive science approach. Examine the words people use and how people think; whether language structure affects thought; and some cognitive aspects of language.

Examine the verbal artistic traditions such as jokes, story-telling, song, chant, poetry, etc., of Native American peoples.

Examine various aspects of bilingual first language acquisition including phonology, morphology, and syntax, as well as the child's use of his/her languages.

Discuss how language relates to the written word and how linguistic analysis is intertwined with writing. Examine the typology and evolution of writing systems, the psycholinguistics of reading and writing, and the role of writing in contemporary language politics.

Explore connections between language and various musical forms, and what the psychological basis for these connections might be.

Introduction to key representations and algorithms used in computational linguistics and key natural language processing applications.

Introduction to machine learning models for discourse processing and text generation. Explore open issues in NLG, including evaluation, ethics, and factuality.

Introduces theoretical and applied topics relating to natural language processing, including machine translation, search, automatic summarization, and dialog systems.

Examine the grammar of signed languages, their use in signing communities, and the acquisition of signed languages as first languages. No knowledge of American Sign Language is required. Conducted in English.

Supervised research experience.

Supervised student-initiated research.

Introduction to the study of the syntactic structure of modern English from the viewpoint of generative grammar.

Development of sounds, forms, and vocabulary of the English language from its origins to the present.

An interdisciplinary introduction to bias from the perspectives of psychology, political science, business, philosophy, and linguistics.

Examine basic machine learning methods, with an emphasis on building applications that intelligently analyze text. Explore supervised learning (e.g., logistic regression, neural networks), unsupervised learning (e.g., clustering), and natural language processing.

Explore theories of linguistic meaning using logical and mathematical tools. Introduction to key ideas from compositional and lexical semantics.

Methods and principles of analyzing the sound systems of languages.

Discuss the methods and principles of describing the syntactic systems of languages.

Examine theory and research concerning the development of language in children.

Introduction to the history and contemporary form of African American Language (AAL). Through readings, examine the linguistic description of essential features, the use of AAL in the creation of culturally and historically influential texts, and AAL as a subject of public discussion.

Examine language rights as a tool for defending small-scale and minority language communities against the spread of national and global languages.

Explore the myriad of indigenous languages of North America and how they are intertwined with culture.

Examine speech play and verbal art (from puns to lies to songs to stories to poetry) from ethnographic and linguistic perspectives in a host of contexts and languages.

Explore current interests in sociolinguistic research literature. Examine language and gender; social, regional, and ethnic dialects of American English; language use in African American communities; language and identity in a pluralistic society; and language, literacy, and education.

Introduction to formal syntax, which refers to the use of a mathematically precise formalism to model the syntax of human languages and test theories against the challenge of new data. Hands-on solving of syntax puzzles of increasing complexity.

Supervised individual study of selected problems in linguistics.

Supervised individual reading for one semester, followed by research and writing to produce a substantial paper.

Supervised individual reading for one semester, followed by research and writing to produce a substantial paper.

Supervised individual reading for one semester, followed by research and writing to produce a substantial paper.

The descriptive techniques of generative phonology.

An introduction to the description and analysis of syntax.

An introduction to formal semantics and pragmatics, and the logical techniques needed to analyze them.

An introduction to sociolinguistic research, with attention to theoretical issues.

Readings and problems in current phonological theory.

Advanced description and analysis of syntax.

Speech production and perception; acoustic phonetics; phonetics and phonology; experimental techniques.

Continuation of Linguistics 380M. Descriptive methods and theoretical tools for investigating meaning in human languages; an introduction to propositional content and speech acts.

The principles of language change, reconstruction of earlier linguistic stages, language contact, and language relatedness.

The comparative method; applications to particular linguistic families.

Examine the Semitic languages and review the basic features of their phonology, morphology, and syntax.

Languages studied have included Chatino, German, Mayan, Romance languages, and others.

Methods of research in phonological and grammatical description; work with speakers of under-described languages.

Application of the findings of linguistics to the teaching of languages.

A reading course in a selected area of linguistics.

Basic tools for analyzing and describing a language through linguistic fieldwork, including phonetic transcription, the discovery and presentation of surface phonology, morphophonology, inflectional morphology, derivational morphology, grammatical categories, and syntax.

An introduction to the typological study of language: the investigation into the nature of human language, as informed by systematic cross-linguistic comparison.

Explore how and why metaphors vary both across and within cultures, across different genres, and through time.

Examine the phenomenon of language contact from both structural and sociocultural angles. Investigate processes and patterns involved in lexical and structural borrowing, formation of new contact varieties such as creoles and mixed languages, role of contact in driving and shaping language change, and dynamics of specific contact zones. Explore the role of discourse strategies and norms, bilingualism, code-switching, and particular sociocultural practices in determining the nature of the contact that takes place and its effects on the languages involved.

Explore theories and applications frame semantics within linguistics.

Explore theories of word meaning, including what the basic elements of word meaning are, how those elements are composed into more complex meanings, and what kinds of grammatical processes augment and modify word meanings. Examine the nature of lexical categories, representations of events and individuals, and how a word's meaning is related to its syntactic and morphological properties.

Examine the way word meanings and their grammatical behavior vary across languages. Examine specific case studies to explore how the same types of word meanings can be represented differently across languages and how the principles that relate word meaning to grammar also vary, focusing on argument realization, morphological processes of word building, and lexical inventories.

Investigate work within the minimalist program, the current instantiation of the principles and parameters approach to the study of the human language faculty. Examine the development of the minimalist program, including a critical overview of its key concepts and the basic properties of its formal framework. Explore several case studies drawn from very recent work within this tradition that are illustrative of the nature of the approach.

Investigate the interface between word meaning and syntax beginning with an overview of polysemy, vagueness, prototypes, semantic change and the acquisition of word meaning. Explore the mapping from the lexicon to the syntax, focusing on predicate-argument mapping, argument alternations, and lexicalization patterns.

Supervised research.

Detailed investigation of an area of current interest in sociolinguistics. Most topics provide an opportunity for field research.

Preparation of a report to fulfill the requirement for the master's degree under the report option.

Teaching under the close supervision of the course instructor; weekly group meetings with instructor, individual consultations, and reports throughout the teaching period.