LINGUISTICS
(AS) {LING}  

American Sign Language and Irish Gaelic courses are sponsored by the Department of Linguistics and offered through the Penn Language Center. Please see http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/

Undergraduate Courses  

010. Fundamentals of the Grammar of Standard English. (L) Staff. Offered through CGS.

LING 010 uses a combination of traditional and modern approaches to grammar to improve the student's knowledge of the English language.  The course covers a wide range of topics, including traditional grammar (parts of speech and sentence diagramming), prescriptive grammar/stylistics (dangling participles, split infinitives, etc.), modern generative syntax (sentence structure, pronoun reference), discourse structure, and composition.  LING 010 is of use to anyone who wishes to strengthen his or her oral and written communication skills as well as to those students who plan to teach English or language arts.

SM 054. Bilingualism in History. (A) Sankoff. Freshman Seminar.

This course takes a historical approach to tracing (and reconstructing) the nature of language contacts and bilingualism, over the course of human history.  Contacts between groups of people speaking different languages, motivated by trade, migration, conquest and intermarriage, are documented from earliest records.  At the same time, differences in socio-historical context have created different kinds of linguistic outcomes.  Some languages have been completely lost; new languages have been created.  In still other cases, the nature and structure of language has been radically altered.  The course introduces the basics of linguistic structure through a discussion of which aspects of language have proved to be relatively stable, and which are readily altered, under conditions of bilingualism.

SM 057. Language and Popular Culture. (A) Distribution Course in Society. Class of 2009 & prior only. Staff.

The purpose of this course is to examine representations of human (and non-human) language as they appear in popular media such as the film, television, cartoons, advertising, and other popular genres.  Popular (mis)conceptions of what human language is like will be contrasted with more scientific conceptions of language based on the knowledge constructed in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, and other disciplines.

SM 058. Language and Cognition. (B) Living World Sector. All classes. Embick.

Because of its apparently species-specific nature, language is central to the study of the human mind.  We will pursue an interdisciplinary approach to such questions in this course, moving from the structures of language as revealed by linguistic theory to connections with a number of related fields that are broadly referred to as the "cognitive sciences".  A number of specific topics will be addressed from these related fields.  The structures of language and its role in human cognition will be set against the background of animal communication systems.  We will examine the question of how children acquire extremely complex linguistic systems without explicit instruction, drawing on psychological work on the language abilities of children.  Additional attention will be focused on the question of how language is represented and computed in the brain, and, correspondingly, how this is studied with brain-imaging techniques.

L/R 102. Introduction to Sociolinguistics. (B) Society Sector. All classes. Labov/Sankoff. Satisfies Quantitative Data Analysis.

Human language viewed from a social and historical perspective.  Students will acquire the tools of linguistic analysis through interactive computer programs, covering phonetics, phonology and morphology, in English and other languages.  These techniques will then be used to trace social differences in the use of language, and changing patterns of social stratification.  The course will focus on linguistic changes in progress in American society, in both mainstream and minority communities, and the social problems associated with them.  Students will engage in field projects to search for the social correlates of linguistic behavior, and use quantitative methods to analyze the results.

103. Introduction to Language: Language Structure and Verbal Art. (A) Arts & Letters Sector. All Classes. Noyer.

The purpose of this course is to explore the relationship between linguistic structure and the use of language for artistic purposes.  The syllabus is organized as a sequence of units, each built around a particular theme.  These include the sound structure of poetry (meter, rhyme, and other linguistic patterns in Jabberwocky, the Odyssey, Shakespeare, the Troubadours, and others); how precise linguistic data can be used to solve an outstanding literary problem (determining the approximate date when Beowulf was composed); and the structure of folktales of various cultures and of narratives of everyday experience .

105. (CIS 140, COGS001, PHIL044, PSYC107) Introduction to Cognitive Science. (A) Richards/Ungar.

Cognitive Science is founded on the realization that many problems in the analysis of human and artificial intelligence require an interdisciplinary approach.  The course is intended to introduce undergraduates from many areas to the problems and characteristic concepts of Cognitive Science, drawing on formal and empirical approaches from the parent disciplines of computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology.  The topics covered include Perception, Action, Learning, Language, Knowledge Representation, and Inference, and the relations and interactions between such modules.  The course shows how the different views from the parent disciplines interact, and identifies some common themes among the theories that have been proposed.  The course pays particular attention to the distinctive role of computation in such theories, and provides an introduction to some of the main directions of current research in the field.

L/R 106. Introduction to Formal Linguistics. (A) Staff.

This course is intended as an introduction to the application of formal language theory, automata theory, and other computational models to the understanding of natural human language.  Topics include regular languages and finite state automata; context-free languages and pushdown automata; recursive transition networks; augmented transition networks; tree-adjoining grammars.

110. Introduction to Language Change. (B) History & Tradition Sector. All classes. Ringe.

This course covers the principles of language change and the methods of historical linguistics on an elementary level.  The systematic regularity of change, the reasons for that regularity, and the exploitation of regularity in linguistic reconstruction are especially emphasized.  Examples are drawn from a wide variety of languages, both familiar and unfamiliar.  Since there are no prerequisites, the course includes mini-introductions to articulatory phonetics, basic phonology (especially the principle of contrast), and basic morphology (especially inflection), all of which must be understood in order to understand the ways in which they change.

L/R 115. Writing Systems. (A) History & Tradition Sector. All classes. Buckley.

The historical origin of writing in Sumeria, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica; the transmission of writing across languages and cultures, including the route from Phoenician to Greek to Etruscan to Latin to English; the development of individual writing systems over time; the traditional classification of written symbols (ideographic, logographic, syllabic, alphabetic); methods of decipherment; differences between spoken and written language; how linguistic structure influences writing, and is reflected by it; social and psychological aspects of writing.

135. (PSYC135) Psychology of Language. (M) Dahan. Prerequisite(s): LING 001 or PSYC 001.

This course describes the nature of human language, how it is used to speak and comprehend, and how it is learned.  Subtopics include animal communication, language pathologies, second-language learning, and language in special populations (such as Down Syndrome and autistic children, and children born deaf or blind).

160. (AFRC160) Introduction to African American and Latino English. (A) Distribution Course in Hist & Tradition. Class of 2009 & prior only. Labov.

An introduction to the use and structure of dialects of English used by the African American and Latino communities in the United States.  It is an academically based service learning course.  The field work component involves the study of the language and culture of everyday life and the application of this knowledge to programs for raising the reading levels of elementary school children.

SM 161. (AFRC161) The Sociolinguistics of Reading: A Service Learning Seminar. (A) Distribution Course in Society. Class of 2009 & prior only. Labov. Prerequisite(s): LING/AFRC 160 or permission of instructor.

This course will be concerned with the application of current knowledge of dialect differences to reduce the minority differential in reading achievement.  Members will conduct projects and design computer programs to reduce cultural distance between teachers and students in local schools and to develop knowledge of word and sound structure.

SM 202. (LING502) Introduction to Field Linguistics. (M) Staff. Prerequisite(s): LING 001, 102 or 330, or permission of instructor.

Instruction and practice in primary linguistic research, producing a grammatical sketch and a lexicon through work with native-speaker informants and some reference materials.  Informant work will be common with LING 502.

240. (GRMN210) Structure of a Language. (M) Staff.

250. Introduction to Syntax. (B) Santorini. This course was formerly numbered LING 150 and is identical in content.

This course is an introduction to current syntactic theory, covering the principles that govern phrase structure (the composition of phrases and sentences), movement (dependencies between syntactic constituents), and binding (the interpretation of different types of noun phrases).  Although much of the evidence discussed in the class will come from English, evidence from other languages will also play an important role, in keeping with the comparative and universalist perspective of modern syntactic theory.

255. Formal Semantics and Cognitive Science. (K) Staff.

This course introduces the components and formal mechanisms underlying meaning in human language and uses them as a window on the human mind, its psychological development and adult cognitive processes.  Topics include what kinds of concepts a noun or a determiner can encode; how children learn the meaning of words; how these "atoms" of meaning are combined in a mathematical procedure to yield the meaning of sentences; how semantic ambiguities are processed psychologically; and the development of a theory of mind.  Formal tools from Set Theory and Predicate Logic will be introduced and applied both to the linguistic and to the cognitive characterization of meaning.

270. Language Acquisition. (M) Yang. An introduction to language acquisition in children and the development of related cognitive and perceptual systems.  Topics include the nature of speech perception and the specialization to the native language; the structure and acquisition of words; children's phonology; the development of grammar; bilingualism and second language acquisition; language learning impairments; the biological basis of language acquisition; the role in language learning in language change.  Intended for any undergraduate interested in the psychology and development of language.

SM 300. Tutorial in Linguistics. (A) Santorini. Prerequisite(s): Senior status or permission of the instructor.  Majors only.

This tutorial allows students to deal in a concentrated manner with selected major topics in linguistics by means of extensive readings and research.  Two topics are studied during the semester, exposing students to a range of sophisticated linguistic questions.

301. Conference. (C)

An independent study for majors in linguistics.

310. History of the English Language. (A) Ringe/Kroch.

This course traces the linguistic history of English from its earliest reconstructable ancestor, Proto-Indo-European, to the present.  We focus especiallly on significant large-scale changes, such as the restructuring of the verb system in Proto-Germanic, the intricate interaction of sound changes in the immediate prehistory of Old English, syntactic change in Middle English, and the diversification of English dialects since 1750.

319. (LING519, SAST333) Topics in Dravidian Linguistics. (M) Distribution Course in Society. Class of 2009 & prior only. Staff.

We will begin with an overview of the Dravidian family as a whole (languages, speakers, history of research), then followed by a general structural description of a particular modern Dravidian language (such as Tamil or Kannada), and concluding with a focus on a number of topics of crucial interest in the field (phonological, morphological, syntactic, sociolinguistic, historical) including close reading of recent scholarship in these areas.  Students will write a paper on a topic of their own theoretical interest, using data from a selected Dravidian language.

330. (LING503) Sound Structure of Language. (B) Noyer.

An introduction to phonetics and phonology.  Topics include articulatory phonetics (the anatomy of the vocal tract; how speech sounds are produced); transcription (conventions for representing the sounds of the world's languages); classification (how speech sounds are classified and represented cognitively through distinctive features); phonology (the grammar of speech sounds in various languages: their patterning and interaction); advanced issues in phonological representation (syllables and feature geometry); Optimality Theory (constraint-based versus derivational phonological grammars).

398. Senior Thesis. (C) Staff.

404. Morphological Theory. (M) Embick.

This course will explore some issues concerning the internal structure of words.  After a brief introduction to some basic terms and concepts, we will discuss the interaction of morphology with phonology.  We will look both at how morphology conditions phonological rules and how phonology conditions morphology.  Then we will turn to the interaction of syntax and morphology. We will look at some problems raised by inflectional morphology, clitics and compounds.  The main requirement for the class will be a series of homework exercises in morphological analysis.

SM 411. Old English. (M) Kroch.

The main purpose of this course is to teach students to read Old English ("Anglo-Saxon"), chiefly but not exclusively for research in linguistics. Grammar will be heavily emphasized; there will also be lectures on the immediate prehistory of the language, since the morphology of Old English was made unusually complex by interacting sound changes.  In the first eight weeks we will work through Moore and Knott's "Elements of Grammar" and learn the grammar; the remainder of the term will be devoted to reading texts.

440. Pidgins and Creoles. (H) Sankoff.

The origins and development of pidgins (languages of intercommunication that have evolved for practical reasons in situations of trade, conquest, or colonization, and spoken as second or auxiliary languages) and creoles (languages with native speakers that have developed from previous pidgins); relations between creoles and other languages; implications of creole studies for general theories of language and language change.

450. Languages in Contact. (I) Sankoff.

Multilingualism from a societal, individual, and linguistic point of view. The different types of contacts between populations and between individuals which give rise to multilingualism. Second-language acquisition and the problem of the "critical age." Cognitive and cultural aspects of multilingualism; applications to the teaching of languages. "Bidialectalism." Code-switching (alternation), interference and integration: the mutual influences of languages in contact. Political and social aspects of multilingualism.

SM 470. (AFST260, ENGL260, LALS260) Narrative Analysis. (M) Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only. Labov.

The course will develop our understanding of narrative structure on the basis of oral narratives of personal experience, told by speakers from a wide range of geographic backgrounds and social classes.  It will link the principles governing oral narratives to the narratological examination of myth, literature and film by Propp, Greimas, Prince, Chatman, and others.The principles that emerge from the study of oral narrative will be re-examined in literary narrative, including Scandinavian, Greek and Hebrew epics, medieval romances, film, and modern novels, with attention to the differences between vernacular, literary and academic style.  The class will then consider the work of psychologists on how narratives are remembered and understood, based on the causal network theory of Trabasso, and apply these principles to narratives written to teach children to read, particularly those designed to reflect the cultural and linguistic framework of African American children.

Graduate Courses  

501. Survey Sociolinguistics. (J) Sankoff. Prerequisite(s): LING 102 or equivalent.

Speech communities as a focus for the understanding of language evolution and change: language variation in time and space.  The relationship between language structure and language use; between language change and social change.  Populations as differentiated by age, sex, social class, race, and ethnicity, and the relationship of these factors to linguistic differentiation.

SM 502. (LING202) Introduction to Field Linguistics. (M) Staff. Prerequisite(s): LING 520, LING 530 or permission of instructor.

Instruction and practice in primary linguistic research, combining study of reference materials and work with native-speakers.  The emphasis will be on quickly building a grammatical sketch and a lexicon adequate to support further research.  Each student will do a term project investigating some phenomenon of general interest.

503. (LING330) Sound Structure of Language. (B) Noyer.

An introduction to articulatory and acoustic phonetics; phonetic transcription; basic concepts and methods of phonological analysis.  Term project required.

505. Research Topics. (C)

A reading course on specialized topics in linguistics.  Arranged by instructor.

SM 506. Dynamics of Language. (C) Yang.

This course introduces the tools, techniques, as well as current research on the approach to language as a dynamical system, which seeks to fruitfully integrate linguistic theory, psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and historical linguistics through the means of mathematical modeling.  Topics include: string processing, dynamical systems and stability, stochastic processes, mathematical models of population dynamics, and dynamical models of language learning, processing, and change.

510. Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics. (A) Ringe.

Synchronic and diachronic systems.  Analogic processes.  Semantic change. Effects of contact.  Internal reconstruction.  Comparative method and reconstruction.

519. (LING319, SAST333) Topics in Dravidian Linguistics. (M) Staff.

After an overview of the Dravidian family as a whole (languages, speakers, history of research), and a general structural description on one particular language (Tamil or Kannada), this course will then focus on a number of topics of crucial interest in the field.  Most recently, this has been grammaticalization, i.e. how languages recruit and utilize lexical material as grammatical morphemes over time.  After a general review of this topic, grammaticalization in Dravidian in particular will be examined, especially how this works in highly diglossic languages such as Tamil.  Students will write a paper on a topic of their own theoretical interest, using data from a selected Dravidian language, or a language with similar problems.

L/L 520. Introduction to Phonetics. (A) Yuan. Prerequisite(s): An introductory course in linguistics, or consent of instructor.

Speech: its linguistic transcription, its quantitative physical description, and its relationship to the categories and dimensions of language structure and use.  The physical basis of speech: acoustics, vocal tract anatomy and physiology, hearing and speech perception, articulation and motor control. Phonetic variation and change.  Prosody: stress, intonation, phrasing speech rate.  Phonetic instrumentation, the design and interpretation of phonetic experiments, and the use of phonetic evidence in linguistic research, with emphasis on computer techniques.  Introduction to speech signal processing. Speech technology: introduction to speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, speech coding.  This course will emphasize the phonetics of natural speech, and its connections to issues in other areas of linguistics and cognitive science.

L/L 521. Introduction to Phonetics II. (B) Yuan. Prerequisite(s): LING 520.

525. (CIS 558) Computer Analysis and Modeling of Biological Signals and Systems. (A) Liberman.

A hands-on signal and image processing course for non-EE graduate students needing these skills.  We will go through all the fundamentals of signal and image processing using computer exercises developed in MATLAB.  Examples will be drawn from speech analysis and synthesis, computer vision, and biological modeling.

530. Phonology I. (A) Noyer. Prerequisite(s): LING 503 or equivalent.

First half of a year-long introduction to the formal study of phonology. Basic concepts in articulatory phonetics; the distribution of sounds (phonemes and allophones); underlying and surface forms, and how to relate them using both ordered-rule and surface-constraint approaches.  The survey of theoretical topics in this term includes distinctive features (context, organization, underspecification); the autosegmental representation of tone; and the theory of phonological domains and their interaction with morphological and syntactic constituency.  Emphasizes hands-on analysis of a wide range of data.

531. Phonology II. (B) Buckley. Prerequisite(s): LING 530.

Second half of a year-long introduction; continues LING 530.  Topics to be surveyed include syllable structure and moraic theory; the prosodic hierarchy; the properties and representation of geminates; templatic and prosodic morphology; reduplication and emergence of the unmarked; and metrical phonology (properties of stress, foot typology, and issues of constituency). Emphasizes hands-on analysis of a wide range of data.

535. Workshop in Phonetics and Phonology. (M) Buckley, Noyer. Prerequisite(s): LING 530-531, or equivalent.

This course is intended for students who have had at least one year of graduate-level phonological theory and are interested in developing a research paper on a particular topic in phonology.  Each student will present his or her topic several times during the semester as the analysis develops, with feedback from the instructors and other students to improve the organization and content of the analysis.  The goal is an end product appropriate for delivery at a national conference or submission to a journal.

540. (SAST537) Language Policy. (M) Staff.

This course examines the sociolinguistic context of modern multilingual states and the impact of their linguistic policies on the cultural identity of linguistic minorities.  In the United States, the history of multilingualism will be examined, tracing the growth of linguistic assimilationism and the rebirth of assertive bilingualism, and comparing it with policies of other multilingual societies in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America.  Attention is paid to typological aspects of bilingualism, controversies surrounding intelligence and multilingualism, as well as attitudes toward language loyalty and ethno-linguistic identity in various societies.  Special cultural factors such as the role of religion, immigrational recency, literacy, socio-economic status, race, educational level and ethnic pride will be surveyed in terms of their impact on maintenance and/or assimilation.  Students will undertake a term project examining some aspect of the above topics in a real or historical community of their preference.

SM 548. Proof Theoretic Foundations of Linguistic Structure. (A) Clark.

This course covers the fundamentals of proof theory and logic as they apply to linguistics.  The notion of a well-formed derivation is fundamental to all flavors of formal linguistics and all sub-disciplines of linguistics-phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics.  It rests, ultimately, on axiomatic systems developed by logicians to encode the process of valid formal reasoning.  We will place a particular emphasis on constructive methods and, where appropriate, develop connections with parsing theory, automatic theorem proving and computational semantics.  Time permitting, we will consider some introductory topics in substructural logic-systems that encode some proper sub-part of first order logic.  These systems have proven very important in planning, theorem proving, dynamic logic and computational linguistics.  The course is intended as a preparation for Linguistics 553 (Formal Semantics I).  It includes a review of the propositional and predicate calculus before introducing tableaux and resolution systems, unification, axiomatic systems, natural deduction and sequent calculi.  The latter two systems are particularly relevant for grammar formalisms like phrase structure grammars, TAGs and Categorial Grammar.

549. (CIS 477) Mathematical Techniques in Natural Language Processing. (A) Joshi.

Basic concepts of set theory, relations and functions, properties of relations.  Basic concepts of algebra.  Grammars, languages, and automata-finite state grammars, regular expressions, finite state transducers, context-free grammars and pushdown automata.  Context-sensitive grammars- string context sensitivity and structural context-sensitivity.  Mildly context-sensitive grammars.  Turingmachines.  Grammars ad deductive systems, parsing as deduction.  Stochastic grammars.  The course will deal with these topics in a very basic and introductory manner, i.e., the key ideas of the proofs and not detailed proofs will be presented.  More importantly, throughout the course plenty of linguistic examples to bring out the linguistic relevance of these topics will be discussed.

550. Syntax I. (A) Kroch.

A general introduction at the graduate level to the analysis of sentence structure.  The approach taken is that of contemporary generative-transformational grammar.

551. Syntax II. (B) Embick. Prerequisite(s): LING 550 or permission of instructor.

The second half of a year-long introduction to the formal study of natural language syntax.  Topics to be covered include grammatical architecture; derivational versus representational statement of syntactic principles; movement and locality; the interface of syntax and semantics; argument structure; and other topics.  The emphasis is on reading primary literature and discussing theoretical approaches, along with detailed case-studies of specific syntactic phenomena in different languages.

553. Formal Semantics I. (B) Staff. Prerequisite(s): LING 548.

Linguistics 553 will cover those elements of logic that are fundamental to semantic theory.  The course will treat basic set theory, propositional logic (formulas, truth-functional connectives, truth tables), predicate logic (quantification, interpretation relative to a model) and natural inference. Given these foundations, we will then cover intensional logic and type theory. The formal discussion will be highlighted with semantic treatments of some natural language phenomena (Montague's analysis of a fragment of English, definite descriptions, generalized quantifiers, reference in opaque contexts, perception verbs).

554. Formal Semantics II. (A) Clark. Prerequisite(s): LING 550-553, or equivalent.

An introduction to those aspects of mathematics relevant for the formal analysis of linguistic meaning.  Emphasis is laid on the following areas: semantic automata, type theory, combinatory logic, the lambda calculus, proof theory, the lambeck calculus and update logic.

SM 556. Historical Syntax. (M) Kroch. Prerequisite(s): LING 551 or the equivalent.

Introduction to the study of the syntax of languages attested only in historical corpora.  The course will cover methods and results in the grammatical description of such languages and in the diachronic study of syntactic change.

SM 560. The Study of the Speech Community: Field Methods. (E) Labov/Sankoff.

For students who plan to carry out research in the speech community. Techniques and theory derived from sociolinguistic studies will be used to define neighborhoods, enter the community, analyze social networks, and obtain tape-recorded data from face-to-face interviews. Students will work in groups and study a single city block.

SM 562. Quantitative Study of Linguistic Variation. (I) Labov. Prerequisite(s): LING 560.

Multivariate analysis of data gathered in continuing research in the speech community; variable rule analysis and use of Cedergren/Sankoff program; instrumental analysis of speech signal; experimental techniques for study of subjective correlates of linguistic boundaries.

SM 563. Sound Change in Progress. (M) Labov. Prerequisite(s): LING 520.

The study of current sound changes in the speech community through instrumental means. Causes of linguistic diversity and consequences for speech recognition.

568. Dialect Geography. (M) Labov.

The principles, practices and findings of dialect geography from the nineteenth century to the present.  Computational organization of dialect data.  The study of current dialect differentiation in American English and other areas.

590. Linguistic Pragmatics I. (A) Staff. Prerequisite(s): LING 550 or permission of instructor.

This course is the first of a two-term introduction to linguistic pragmatics, the branch of linguistics whose goal is to provide a formal characterization of discourse competence, i.e. of what people know when they "know" how to use (a) language.  Among the topics investigated are: The Cooperative Principle, conversational and conventional implicature, speech acts, reference, and presupposition.

SM 591. Linguistic Pragmatics II. (B) Staff. Prerequisite(s): LING 590.

This course is the second of a two-term introduction to linguistic pragmatics. Among the topics investigated are: given/new information, definiteness/ indefiniteness, topic/comment, Centering Theory, discourse structure, and the functions of syntax.

SM 603. Topics in Phonology. (M) Buckley/Noyer. Prerequisite(s): LING 530-531, or permission of instructor.

Topics are chosen from such areas as featural representations; syllable theory; metrical structure; tonal phonology; prosodic morphology; interaction of phonology with syntax and morphology.

SM 604. Topics in Discourse Analysis. (C) Staff. Prerequisite(s): LING 550 and LING 590 or permission of instructor.

Selected topics in discourse and pragmatics, e.g. reference, presupposition, functions of syntax.

SM 610. (GRMN602) Seminar in Historical and Comparative Linguistics. (C) Ringe.

Selected topics either in Indo-European comparative linguistics or in historical and comparative method.

SM 615. Comparative Indo-European Grammar. (E) Ringe.

A survey of phonology and grammar of major ancient Indo-European languages and the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European. A knowledge of at least one ancient Indo-European language is required.

SM 620. Topics in Prosody. (M) Liberman/Yuan.

SM 630. Seminar in Morphology. (M) Noyer/Embick. Prerequisite(s): LING 530.

Readings in modern morphological theory and evaluation of hypotheses in the light of synchronic and diachronic evidence from various languages.

SM 640. Formal Semantics and Mathematical Linguistics. (B) Clark.

Advanced readings in formal semantics and discrete and continuous models of linguistic behavior.

SM 650. Topics in Natural-Language Syntax. (C) Staff. Prerequisite(s): LING 551 or permission of instructor.

Detailed study of topics in syntax and semantics, e.g., pronominalization, negation, complementation.  Topics vary from term to term.

SM 653. Topics in the syntax-semantics interface. (A)

Topics in the Syntax-Semantics Interface

SM 656. Seminar in Historical Syntax. (M) Kroch.

This course analyzes several well documented syntactic changes in the European languages with the tools of modern grammatical and quantitative analysis.  The focus is on the competition between forms and systems as in the loss of the verb-second constraint in English and French and the competition between head initial and head final word orders in the several West Germanic languages.

SM 660. Research Seminar in Sociolinguistics. (M) Sankoff. This course will have different topics each term.

Students approaching the dissertation level will explore with faculty frontier areas of research on linguistic change and variation.  Topics addressed in recent years include: experimental investigation of the reliability of syntactic judgments; the development of TMA systems in creoles; transmission of linguistic change across generations.  The course may be audited by those who have finished their course work or taken for credit in more than one year.

999. Independent Study and Research. (C) Student must submit brief proposal for approval.  May be repeated for credit.

Language Courses  

071. American Sign Language I. (C) Staff. Offered through the Penn Language Center.

Introduction to learning and understanding American Sign Language ( ASL ); cultural values and rules of behavior of the Deaf community in the United States.  Includes receptive and expressive readiness activities; sign vocabulary; grammatical structure; facial expressive, body movement, gestures signs; receptive and expressive fingerspelling; and deaf culture.

072. American Sign Language II. (C) Staff. Prerequisite(s): LING 071 or Permission of the Instructor. Offered through the Penn Language Center.

Increased communication skill in American Sign Language ( ASL ); cultural values and behavioral rules of the deaf community in the U.S.; receptive and expressive activities; sign vocabulary; grammatical structure; receptive and expressive fingerspelling and aspects of Deaf culture.

073. American Sign Language III. (C) Staff. Prerequisite(s): LING 072 or permission of instructor. Offered through the Penn Language Center.

Expanded instruction of American Sign Language (ASL).  Receptive and expressive activities; sign vocabulary; grammatical structure; receptive and expressive fingerspelling; narrative skills, cultural bahviors; and aspects of Deaf culture.  Abstract and conversational approach.

074. American Sign Language IV. (C) Staff. Prerequisite(s): LING 073 or permission of instructor. Offered through the Penn Language Center.

Increases the emphasis on more abstract and challenging conversational and narrative range.  Includes receptive and expressive readiness activities; sign vocabulary; grammatical structure; receptive and expressive fingerspelling; various aspects of Deaf culture and cultural behavior rules.

075. American Sign Language V. (C) Clark. Prerequisite(s): LING 074 or permission of instructor. Offered through the Penn Language Center.

This course is an advanced ASL course in which students will continue to expand their conversational and narrative range.  While receptive readiness activities continue to be an important part of the class, the emphasis moves toward honing expressive sign skills.  Various aspects of Deaf culture and cultural behavior rules will be incorporated into the course; a key component of the course is a unit on Deaf history and famous Deaf people.

SM 078. Topics in Deaf Culture. (C) Clark. Prerequisite(s): LING 074 or permission from coordinator. Offered through Penn Language Center.

This course is an advanced/conversational ASL course that explores several key topics related to Deaf Culture.  Using only ASL in class, students will read and discuss books, articles, and films related to the following topics: What is Deaf Culture?, The History of the Deaf American, Communication Issues and Pathological Perspectives on Deafness, Deafness and Education, CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults), and Performing Arts by the Deaf.  Vocabulary, grammar, and idioms related to the topics will be presented through direct instruction as well as through the course of class conversation.

081. Beginning Irish Gaelic I. (D) Blyn-LaDrew. Offered through the Penn Language Center.

Irish Gaelic, spoken primarily on the west coast of Ireland, is rich in oral traditions, song, poetry and literature.  Knowledge of this language provides a foundation to understanding Celtic folklore and linguistics and also enhances the study of Anglo-Irish literature and history.  The first-year course will include reading, conversation, listening and speaking.

082. Beginning Irish Gaelic II. (C) Blyn-LaDrew. Prerequisite(s): LING 081 or permission from instructor. Offered through Penn Language Center.

083. Intermediate Irish Gaelic I. (C) Blyn-LaDrew. Prerequisite(s): LING 082 or equivalent. Offered through the Penn Language Center.

085. Advanced Irish Gaelic I. (C) Blyn-LaDrew. Prerequisite(s): LING 084 or equivalent. Offered through Penn Language Center.

086. Advanced Irish Gaelic II. (C) Blyn-LaDrew. Prerequisite(s): LING 085 or equivalent. Offered through the Penn Language Center.

This course will emphasize reading of literary texts, and advanced aspects of grammar, composition, and conversation.

088. History of the Irish Language. (L) Blyn-LaDrew. Offered through the Penn Language Center.

From downloadable lists of computer terminology in Irish to Ogam inscriptions chiseled in stone in the 5th century, the history of the Irish language reflects the history of the people themselves.  This course outlines the language's changes through time and emergence from the unwritten Celtic, proto-Celtic, and Indo-European speech of its ancestors.  Beginning in the modern period, when the very status of Irish as a living language has been hotly debated, the course will look backwards at the Celtic cultural revival of the late 19th century, the impact of the famine, nationalism, colonialism, the arrival of Christianity and the Roman alphabet, and the position of Irish within the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family.  Term papers may be based on fieldwork in the Irish-American community, or research.  Audio and visual resources will supplement the lectures.  Knowledge of Irish Gaelic is not required.