Topic 1: Language and the Brain. Delves into the neuroanatomical and functional operations of the major brain structures that underlie speech/language. Subjects include hemispheric dominance for language, neurological and language breakdowns in aphasia, and brain imaging methods and studies of language representation. Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 2: Language and Thought. Study of the relation between language and thought, using a cognitive science approach. Examines the words people use and how people think; whether language structure affects thought; and some cognitive aspects of language. Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 3: Sign Languages and Signing Communities. 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. Only one of the following may be counted: American Sign Language 326, Linguistics 350 (Topic 3), 355. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. Core Curriculum: 010 Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 4: Language and People. Areas in language and linguistics that most directly impact people, such as language and ethnicity, language and nation-building, and language politics. Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 5: Bilingual Language Acquisition. Examines various aspects of bilingual first language acquisition including phonology, morphology, and syntax, as well as the child's use of his/her languages. Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 6: Indigenous Languages of the Americas. 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. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. Same as: LAS 322.15 Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 7: Language, Cognition and Rhythm. Explores connections between language and various musical forms, and what the psychological basis for these connections might be. Reading materials are drawn primarily from the published literature in psychology, linguistics, and music perception. Linguistics 350 (Topic: Language, Cognition, & Rhythm) and 350 (Topic 7) may not both be counted. Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 9: Psycholinguistics. Examines the psychological mechanisms that people use in learning, comprehending, and producing language. Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 10: How to Describe a Language. 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. Linguistics 350 (Topic: How to Describe a Language) and 350 (Topic 10) may not both be counted. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 11: Speech Intelligibility. 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. Linguistics 350 (Topic: Speech Intelligibility) and 350 (Topic 11) may not both be counted. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. Additional prerequisite: Linguistics 344K, 358S, or consent of instructor.

Topic 12: Analyzing Text Data: A Statistics Toolkit for Linguists. Introduction to statistical concepts and analyses via language problems and linguistic data sets. Linguistics 350 (Topic: Words in a Haystack) and 350 (Topic 12) may not both be counted. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 13: Creole Languages and Their Speakers. Only one of the following may be counted: African and African Diaspora Studies 372G (Topic: Creole Languages and Their Speakers), English 364D (Topic: Creole Languages and Their Speakers), 364D (Topic 2), Linguistics 350 (Topic: Creole Languages and Their Speakers), 350 (Topic 13). Additional prerequisite: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Topic 14: Linguistics of Writing. How language relates to the written word and how linguistic analysis is intertwined with writing. Subjects include the typology and evolution of writing systems, the psycholinguistics of reading and writing, and the role of writing in contemporary language politics. Linguistics 350 (Topic: Linguistics of Writing Systems) and 350 (Topic 14) may not both be counted. Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing.

Topic 15: Computational Semantics. Studies methods for automatically learning and analyzing word meanings and sentence meanings. Encompasses vector space models as well as logic-based semantics. Linguistics 350 (Topic: Computational Semantics) and 350 (Topic 15) may not both be counted. Additional prerequisite: Upper-division standing; and previous programming course in Python or Linguistics 350 (Topic 12) or consent of instructor.