Undergraduate courses in Linguistics

Courses numbered under 100 are designed primarily for pre-majors. Courses with 100-level numbers are designed for majors, minors, and M.A. and Ph.D. minor candidates in Linguistics.

LINGUIST 1. Introduction to Linguistics

The cognitive organization of linguistic structure and the social nature of language use. Why language learning is difficult. Why computers have trouble understanding human languages. How languages differ from one another. How and why speakers of the same language speak differently. How language is used strategically. GER:DB-SocSci

4 units, Aut (Eckert, P; Sag, I), Spr (Pereltsvaig, A)

LINGUIST 5N. What's Your Accent? Investigations in Acoustic Phonetics

(F,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. Phonetic variation across accents of English; experimental design; practical experience examining accents of seminar participants; acoustic analysis of speech using Praat. GER:DB-SocSci

3 units, Aut (Sumner, M)

LINGUIST 37Q. Forensic Linguistics

Preference to sophomores. The use of linguistic techniques to investigate crimes in which language data forms part of the evidence to authenticate police statements, confessions, threats to harm or kill, and suicide notes. Language data including choice of words, sentence structure, punctuation, spelling, handwriting, and voice identification. Differences between what is said, what is meant, and what is understood. Variations in language use and practice between authors and within the same author. Case studies.

2 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 44N. Living with Two Languages

Preference to freshmen. The nature of bi- and multilingualism with emphasis on the social and educational effects in the U.S. and worldwide, in individual versus society, and in child and adult. The social, cognitive, psycholinguistic, and neurological consequences of bilingualism. Participation in planning and carrying out a research project in language use and bilingualism. GER:DB-SocSci

3 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 46Q. Slips of the Tongue

Preference to sophomores. Linguistic mistakes, using collections of real-life errors as windows on how languages are structured and used.

3 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 47N. Languages, Dialects, Speakers

Preference to freshmen. Variation and change in languages from around the world. The roots, historical development, and and linguistic and social structures of variation. How languages differ from each other, and how issues in linguistics connect to other social and cultural issues. The systematic study of language. GER:DB-SocSci

3 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 62N. The Language of Food

(F,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. The relationship between food and language around the globe. The vocabulary of food and prepared dishes, and crosslinguistic similarities and differences, historical origins, forms and meanings, and relationship to cultural and social variables. The structure of cuisines viewed as meta-languages with their own vocabularies and grammatical structure. The language of menus; their historical development and crosslinguistic differences.

3 units, Aut (Jurafsky, D)

LINGUIST 63N. Translation

(F,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. What is a translation? The increased need for translations in the modern world due to factors such as tourism and terrorism, localization and globalization, diplomacy and treaties, law and religion, and literature and science. How to meet this need; different kinds of translation for different purposes; what makes one translation better than another; why some texts are more difficult to translate than others. Can some of this work be done by machines? Are there things that cannot be said in some languages? GER:DB-SocSci

3 units, Aut (Kay, M)

LINGUIST 65. African American Vernacular English

(Same as LINGUIST 265.) The English vernacular spoken by African Americans in big city settings, and its relation to Creole English dialects spoken on the S. Carolina Sea Islands (Gullah), in the Caribbean, and in W. Africa. The history of expressive uses of African American English (in soundin' and rappin'), and its educational implications. GER:DB-SocSci, EC-AmerCul

3-5 units, Spr (Rickford, J)

LINGUIST 90. Teaching Spoken English

Practical approach to teaching English to non-native speakers. Teaching principles and the features of English which present difficulties. Preparation of lessons, practice teaching in class, and tutoring of non-native speaker.

3-4 units, Spr (Streichler, S)

LINGUIST 105. Phonetics

(Same as LINGUIST 205A.) The study of speech sounds: how to produce them, how to perceive them, and their acoustic properties. The influence of production and perception systems on sound change and phonological patterns. Acoustic analysis and experimental techniques. Lab exercises. Prerequisite: 110 or equivalent, or consent of instructor. GER:DB-SocSci

4 units, Spr (Sumner, M)

LINGUIST 110. Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology

Differences in the sounds of the world's languages and how these sounds are made by the human vocal tract. Theories that account for cross-linguistic similarities in the face of differences. GER:DB-SocSci

4 units, Win (Sumner, M)

LINGUIST 112. Seminar in Phonology

(Same as LINGUIST 212A.) Topics vary each year. Previous topics include variation in the phonology of words according to their contexts within larger expressions and the place of these phenomena in a theory of grammar. May be repeated for credit.

2-4 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 116. Morphology

A survey of words including their structures, pronunciations, meanings, and syntactic possibilities in a wide sampling of languages to provide a laboratory for investigating the nature of morphology.

4 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 120. Introduction to Syntax

Grammatical constructions, primarily English, and their consequences for a general theory of language. Practical experience in forming and testing linguistic hypotheses, reading, and constructing rules. GER:DB-SocSci

4 units, Aut (Wasow, T)

LINGUIST 124A. Introduction to Formal Universal Grammar

(Same as LINGUIST 224A.) A formal model of universal grammar designed to explain crosslinguistic variation in syntactic structure: nonconfigurationality in Australian aboriginal languages, incorporation in native American languages and the Bantu languages of Africa, scrambling and head movement in European languages. Issues such as universal grammar design, and analytic problems from a variety of natural languages. Prerequisites: introduction to syntax and familiarity with logic or other symbolic systems, or consent of instructor. GER:DB-SocSci

4 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 130A. Introduction to Linguistic Meaning

Linguistic meaning and its role in communication. How diagnostic tests can be used to categorize and separate semantic phenomena such as ambiguity and vagueness, entailment, and presupposition. How basic set theory and logic can be used to specify meanings and explain semantic phenomena. Pragmatic complications involving the assumptions and intentions of language users. Those who have not taken logic, such as PHIL 150 or 151, should also enroll in 130C. Pre- or corequisite: 120, or consent of instructor. GER:DB-SocSci

4 units, Spr (Staff)

LINGUIST 130B. Introduction to Lexical Semantics

Issues in the study of word meaning. Focus is on the core semantic properties and internal organization of the four major word categories in natural languages: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions. GER:DB-SocSci

4 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 130C. Logic Laboratory

Typically taken in conjunction with 130A/230A.

1 unit, Spr (Staff)

LINGUIST 133. Introduction to Formal Pragmatics

(Same as LINGUIST 233.) (Graduate students register for 233.) Mechanism underlying language use and felicity intuitions. Formal models of discourse that incorporate many aspects of pragmatics such as presuppositions, speech acts, implicatures, relevance, optimality, and utility. Discussion of common ground, illocutionary acts, Gricean maxims and Neo-Gricean analysis, game and decision theory.

3-4 units, Aut (Staff)

LINGUIST 140. Language Acquisition I

(Same as LINGUIST 240.) Processes of language acquisition in early childhood; stages in development; theoretical issues and research questions. Practical experience in data collection. GER:DB-SocSci

4 units, Aut (Clark, E)

LINGUIST 142. Bilingualism, Language Attrition, and Heritage Languages

Linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of first language loss among emigrants; consequences for language teaching. GER:DB-SocSci

3-4 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 144. Introduction to Cognitive and Information Sciences

(Same as PHIL 190, PSYCH 132, SYMBSYS 100.) The history, foundations, and accomplishments of the cognitive sciences, including presentations by leading Stanford researchers in artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. Overview of the issues addressed in the Symbolic Systems major. GER:DB-SocSci

4 units, Spr (Wasow, T; Roberts, E)

LINGUIST 150. Language in Society

How language and society affect each other. Class, age, ethnic, and gender differences in speech. Prestige and stigma associated with different ways of speaking and the politics of language. The strategic use of language. Stylistic practice; how speakers use language to construct styles and adapt their language to different audiences and social contexts. GER:DB-SocSci, WIM

4 units, Win (Hall-Lew, L)

LINGUIST 152. Sociolinguistics and Pidgin Creole Studies

(Same as LINGUIST 252.) Introduction to pidgins and creoles, organized around the main stages in the pidgin-creole life cycle: pidginization, creolization, and decreolization. Focus is on transformations in the English language as it was transported from Britain to Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. Resultant pidginized and creolized varieties such as Nigerian Pidgin English, Chinese Pidgin English, New Guinea Tok Pisin, Suriname Sranan, and the creole continua of Guyana, Jamaica, and Hawaii. Also French, Dutch, Portugese, Chinook, Motu, and Sango.

2-4 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 156. Language and Gender

The role of language in the construction of gender, the maintenance of the gender order, and social change. Field projects explore hypotheses about the interaction of language and gender. No knowledge of linguistics required. GER:DB-SocSci, EC-Gender

4 units, Spr (Eckert, P)

LINGUIST 160. Introduction to Language Change

(Same as ANTHRO 120.) Principles of historical linguistics:, the nature of language change. Kinds and causes of change, variation and diffusion of changes through populations, differentiation of dialects and languages, determination and classification of historical relationships among languages, rates of change, the reconstruction of ancestral languages and intermediate changes, parallels with cultural and genetic evolutionary theory, and implications of variation and change for the description and explanation of language in general. Prerequisite: introductory course in linguistics or evolutionary theory. GER:DB-SocSci

4-5 units, Aut (Fox, J)

LINGUIST 167. Languages of the World

The diversity of human languages, their sound systems, vocabularies, and grammars. Tracing historical relationships between languages and language families. Parallels with genetic evolutionary theory. Language policy, endangered languages and heritage languages. Classification of sign languages. GER:DB-SocSci

3-4 units, Win (Pereltsvaig, A)

LINGUIST 173. The Structure of Russian

(Same as LINGUIST 273.) A synchronic overview of contemporary standard Russian, including its sound system, word formation and grammatical structure. Emphasis is on problems presented by Russian for current linguistic theory. The acquisition of Russian as a first language.

2-4 units, Aut (Pereltsvaig, A)

LINGUIST 174. Field Methods I

(Same as ANTHRO 71, LINGUIST 274A.) Hands-on. The methods by which linguists gather raw linguistic data about a language and begin analyzing its structure. Working with a speaker of a language not previously studied by class participants, students develop a description of key aspects of its grammar and examine methodologies for obtaining, storing, and manipulating data.

2-4 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 180. From Languages to Information

(Same as CS 124.) Automated processing of less structured information: human language text and speech, web pages, social networks, genome sequences, with goal of automatically extracting meaning and structure. Methods include: string algorithms, automata and transducers, hidden Markov models, graph algorithms, XML processing. Applications such as information retrieval, text classification, social network models, machine translation, genomic sequence alignment, word meaning extraction, and speech recognition.

3-4 units, Win (Jurafsky, D)

LINGUIST 182. Human and Machine Translation

(Same as LINGUIST 282.) The process of translation by professional and amateur translators, and by existing and proposed machine-translation systems; what each might learn from the others. Prerequisite: advanced knowledge of a foreign language. GER:DB-EngrAppSci

4 units, not given this year

LINGUIST 183. Computational Theories of Syntax

(Same as LINGUIST 283.) Salient features of modern syntactic theories, including HPSG, LFG, and TAG, motivated by computational concerns. Impact of work within these frameworks on the design of algorithms in computational linguistics, and its influence in both linguistics and computer science. Topics include: notions of unification; unification algorithms and their relation to linguistic theory; agenda-driven chart processing for analysis and synthesis; the interface with morphology, the lexicon, and semantics; and applications, notably machine translation.

3-4 units, Win (Kay, M)

LINGUIST 187. Grammar Engineering

(Same as LINGUIST 287.) Hands-on techniques for implementation of linguistic grammars, drawing on grammatical theory and engineering skills. The implementation of constraints in morphology, syntax, and semantics, working within a unification-based lexicalist framework. Focus is on developing small grammars for English and at least one other language. Prerequisite: basic syntactic theory or 120. No programming skills required.

1-4 units, Win (King, T; Kaplan, R)

LINGUIST 188. Natural Language Understanding

(Same as CS 224U, LINGUIST 288.) Machine understanding of human language. Computational semantics (determination of sense, event structure, thematic role, time, aspect, synonymy/meronymy, causation, compositional semantics, treatment of scopal operators), and computational pragmatics and discourse (coherence relations, anaphora resolution, information packaging, generation). Theoretical issues, online resources, and relevance to applications including question answering, summarization, and textual inference. Prerequisites: one of LINGUIST 180, CS 224N,S; and logic such as LINGUIST 130A or B, CS 157, or PHIL150).

2-4 units, alternate years, not given this year

LINGUIST 191. Linguistics and the Teaching of English as a Second/Foreign Language

(Same as LINGUIST 291.) Methodology and techniques for teaching languages, using concepts from linguistics and second language acquisition theory and research. Focus is on teaching English, but most principles and techniques applicable to any language. Optional 1-unit seminar in computer-assisted language learning. GER:DB-SocSci

4-5 units, Win (Hubbard, P)

LINGUIST 197. Undergraduate Research Seminar

Research goals and methods in linguistics and related disciplines. Students work on a small project to define a focus for their linguistic studies and prepare for honors research. Presentations; final paper.

2 units, Win (Clark, E)

LINGUIST 198. Honors Research

1-15 units, Win (Staff), Spr (Staff)

LINGUIST 199. Independent Study

1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)

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Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

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Undergraduate courses in Linguistics