Courses

Coursework in Linguistics trains you in the description and analysis of linguistic structure, including the organization and presentation of linguistic data and the use of diagnostic criteria in linguistic analysis.

Our students learn how to evaluate critically the relation between principles and theories of language organization and use and their factual and descriptive bases, and to evaluate the legitimacy and plausibility of arguments and conclusions based on linguistic data.

Highlighted courses

Two students talk across a small table.

Introduction to Language

LING-L103

Gain an understanding of how languages work and how they are used by speakers to accomplish their communicative goals. In this introductory course, you are challenged to reconsider commonly held myths about language and perform hands-on work with data from a wide variety of languages. 

A woman holds her phone up to her ear.

Language and Computers

LING-L245

In our heavily digital lives, our human languages get built into many of the systems we use. Dig into the ways in which computer systems work with language and how many aspects of language use are being captured in digital systems. Probe how to use digital systems for language applications. This course forms an entry into the B.S. and B.S./M.S. programs in Linguistics.

Close-up of a student taking notes while using audio lab equipment.

Phonetics

LING-L306

Learn how to observe and work with human speech as a language system. Most of the languages of the world require us to learn different ways to imprint our meanings in an acoustic signal; learn how to work with the signal and to understand how our actions make the signal sound like it does.

Three students discuss a linguistics example beside a blackboard.

Field Methods

LING-L431

Work with a speaker of a language about which very little is already known. Students meet with speakers of undocumented or nearly undocumented languages to begin to understand how these languages work. This course gives the challenge of how to learn about a language from face-to-face interaction with the speaker.