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This archived information is dated to the 2008-09 academic year only and may no longer be current.
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Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09
Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09
Graduate courses in Linguistics
Courses numbered 200 and above are primarily for graduate students, but with consent of instructor some of them may be taken for credit by qualified undergraduates.
LINGUIST 200. Foundations of Linguistic Theory
Theories that have shaped contemporary linguistics; recurrent themes and descriptive practice.
4 units, Aut (Kiparsky, P)
LINGUIST 201. Advanced Introduction to Linguistics
Primarily for graduate students. The leading ideas of linguistic description and argumentation. Fundamental representational notions in phonology, syntax, and semantics, and the place of these notions in wider linguistic analysis.
4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 205A. Phonetics
(Same as LINGUIST 105.) 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.
4 units, Spr (Sumner, M)
LINGUIST 205B. Advanced Phonetics
Prerequisite: LINGUIST 205A.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 207. Seminar in Phonetics
Topics vary. Previous topics include ow variation is accommodated in current models of speech perception, and how perceptual models need to be altered to accommodate phonetic variation encountered by listeners. May be repeated for credit.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 210A. Phonology
Introduction to phonological theory and analysis based on cross-linguistic evidence. Topics: phonological representations including features, syllables, metrical structure; phonological processes including assimilation and dissimilation; and phonological typology and universals; optimality theory.
4 units, Aut (Kiparsky, P)
LINGUIST 210B. Advanced Phonology
The phonological organization of the lexicon. Topics include lexical phonology, phonological subregularities, gradient phonotactics, and lexical frequency effects.
4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 211. Metrics
Principles of versification from a linguistic point of view. Traditional and optimality-theoretic approaches. The canonical system of English metrics, and its varieties and offshoots. The typology of metrical systems and its linguistic basis. The ideology of normative prosodic discourse in relation to changing poetic practice.
1-4 units, Win (Kiparsky, P)
LINGUIST 212A. Seminar in Phonology
(Same as LINGUIST 112.) 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 212B. Seminar in Phonology
May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 214. Phonology Workshop
May be repeated for credit.
1-2 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 216. Morphology
How morphology fits into the lexicon and how the lexicon fits into grammar. Inflection and word-formation: blocking, productivity, analogy. Morphological categories. The interaction of morphology with phonology within the lexicon: level-ordering, prosodic morphology. Review of English morphology and analysis of representative material from languages with richer morphologies.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 217. Morphosyntax
The role of morphology in grammar: how word structure serves syntax in the expression of meaning. Universal properties and typology of morphological categories; proposals towards their principled explanation in a restrictive theory of language.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 218. Seminar in Morphosyntax
May be repeated for credit.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 221A. Foundations of English Grammar
A systematic introduction to the formal analysis of English grammar using the framework of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG). Topics: feature structure modeling, lexical and phrasal organization in terms of type hierarchies and constraint inheritance, clausal types, patterns of complementation, the auxiliary system, extraction dependencies, wh-constructions, and the syntax-semantics interface.
1-4 units, Spr (Sag, I)
LINGUIST 221B. Studies in Universal Grammar
Focus is on grammatical analysis of individual languages. Builds directly on the theoretical foundations presented in 221A. Topics vary each year.
1-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 222A. Empirical Foundations of Syntactic Theory I
Core phenomena of modern syntactic theories from a critical perspective: the role of the verb and lexicon in the determination of sentence syntax. The argument/adjunct distinction, subcategorization and argument structure, motivation for a lexicalist approach, principles governing argument expression, operations on argument structure and grammatical function changing rules, unbounded dependencies, and the approach to unbounded dependencies rooted in principles of lexical expression and subcategorization satisfaction. Readings from classic papers and crosslinguistic perspectives.
2-4 units, Aut (Bresnan, J)
LINGUIST 222B. Foundations of Syntactic Theory II
The nature of unbounded dependency constructions and their treatment in modern grammatical theories. Filler-gap dependencies, island constraints, and the relation between grammar and processing. Prerequisite: 222A.
2-4 units, Win (Sag, I)
LINGUIST 223. Introduction to Minimalist Syntax
Focus is on phrase structure, movement, functional categories, features, the nature of economy conditions, and parametric differences. More general issues of the architecture of the grammar and the nature of crosslinguistic variation.
2-4 units, Win (Pereltsvaig, A)
LINGUIST 224A. Introduction to Formal Universal Grammar
(Same as LINGUIST 124A.) 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.
4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 224B. Advanced Topics in Lexical Functional Grammar
May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 225A. Seminar in Syntax
1-2 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 226. Binding
Comparison of three analyses of binding relations: index analysis, combinator analysis, and copy based analysis. Topics include syntactic binding theory, syntax-semantics interface, scope and binding, reciprocity, ellipsis, de re/de se, agreement, and focus.
1-4 units, Spr (Staff)
LINGUIST 227C. Projects in Syntax
Group research projects using quantitative syntactic data from texts, recordings, experiments, or historical records. Skills in extracting, graphically exploring, and analyzing naturalistic syntactic data, and in presenting results. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: 229A, B, or D, or equivalent.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 229A. Laboratory Syntax I
Critiques of the empirical foundations of syntax. The roles of introspective, usage-based, experimental, and typological evidence. Modern methods of data collection and analysis used in syntax. Hands-on, practical work with data sets. May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, Win (Bresnan, J)
LINGUIST 229B. Laboratory Syntax II
Hands-on use of methods for handling syntactic data, including corpus work on ecologically natural data and controlled experimental paradigms. Explanatory models of syntactic processing and their relation to theories of grammar. May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 229C. Laboratory Syntax III
Hands-on use of methods for handling syntactic data, including corpus work on ecologically natural data and controlled experimental paradigms. Explanatory models of syntactic processing and their relation to theories of grammar. May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 229D. Empirical Syntax Research Seminar
Recent work in syntax that employs data-rich methods like corpora and laboratory studies, emphasizing research by seminar participants. May be repeated for credit.
1-2 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 230A. Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics
Meaning in natural language. Topics: elementary set theory; propositional logic, predicate logic, and lambda calculus, and their relation to semantic analysis; model theoretic characterizations of meaning and semantic properties of English conjunctions and determiners. Grice's theory of implicature, speech acts, Davidson's theories of logical form, and Montague grammar. Recommended: elementary logic and set theory.
2-4 units, Win (Peters, S)
LINGUIST 230B. Semantics and Pragmatics
Expands on 230A. Standard approaches to formal semantics (Montague grammar, DRT, and basic dynamic semantics). Analyses of semantic phenomena in these frameworks. Prerequisites: 230A; or combination of 130A and PHIL 150 and 160.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 232A. Lexical Semantics
Introduction to issues in word meaning, focused primarily around verbs. Overview of the core semantic properties of verbs and the organization of the verb lexicon. Approaches to lexical semantic representation, including semantic role lists, proto-roles, and causal and aspectual theories of event conceptualization.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 232B. Seminar in Lexical Semantics
Space and motion in language. May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, Spr (Clark, E)
LINGUIST 232C. Lexical Semantics Research Seminar
May be repeated for credit. By arrangement.
1-2 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 233. Introduction to Formal Pragmatics
(Same as LINGUIST 133.) (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 234. Discourse Analysis
The organization of language above the sentence level, and the manifestation of language in context. Practical experience in working with discourse data.
4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 235. Semantic Fieldwork
Techniques for evidence from less well-studied languages within formal semantic theory. Semantic phenomena, and techniques for investigating them, including scope, quantifiers, pronouns, focus, tense, aspect, mood, evidentiality, and information structure. Practical work on a language.
2-4 units, Win (Staff)
LINGUIST 236. Seminar in Semantics: Indefinites
Topics vary. Previous topics include static and dynamic approaches to indefinites. May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 237. Seminar in Semantics: Semantics of Questions and Commands
Semantics of interrogatives and imperatives; propositional semantics of declaratives. Research emphasizing the meaning of questions. May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, Win (Peters, S)
LINGUIST 240. Language Acquisition I
(Same as LINGUIST 140.) Processes of language acquisition in early childhood; stages in development; theoretical issues and research questions. Practical experience in data collection.
4 units, Aut (Clark, E)
LINGUIST 241. Language Acquisition II
Constructions and the lexicon. May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, Win (Clark, E)
LINGUIST 242. Methods for Research in Language Acquisition
Research methods in developmental psycholinguistics
4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 245. Experimental Design for Linguistics
Hypothesis formation, confound avoidance, power, general methods, and analysis of results. Students complete a pilot experiment; write-up; peer review; presentation.
4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 247. Seminar in Psycholinguistics
(Same as PSYCH 227.) May be repeated for credit.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 250. Sociolinguistic Theory and Analysis
Methods of modeling the patterned variation of language in society. Emphasis is on variation, its relation to social structure and practice, and its role in linguistic change. Intersection between quantitative and qualitative analysis, combining insights of sociology and linguistic anthropology with quantitative linguistic data. Prerequisite: graduate standing in Linguistics or consent of instructor.
4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 251. Sociolinguistic Field Methods
Strengths and weaknesses of the principal methods of data collection in sociolinguistics.
4 units, Aut (Rickford, J)
LINGUIST 252. Sociolinguistics and Pidgin Creole Studies
(Same as LINGUIST 152.) 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 255. Seminar in Sociolinguistics: Variation and Spoken Style
The nature of spoken style. New kinds of variables that play a role in style, the structure of style, and the role of style in the construction of meaning in variation. Project-based. May be repeated for credit.
3-5 units, Win (Eckert, P)
LINGUIST 257. Seminar in Sociolinguistics: Community Studies of Variation
May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 258. Analysis of Variation
The quantitative study of linguistic variability in time, space, and society emphasizing social constraints in variation. Hands-on work with variable data. Prerequisites: 105/205 and 250, or consent of instructor.
1-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 260A. Historical Morphology and Phonology
Sound change and analogical change in the perspective of linguistic theory. Internal and comparative reconstruction.
4 units, Spr (Kiparsky, P)
LINGUIST 260B. Historical Morphosyntax
Morphological and syntactic variation and change. Reanalysis, grammaticalization. The use of corpora and quantitative evidence.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 265. African American Vernacular English
(Same as LINGUIST 65.) 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.
3-5 units, Spr (Rickford, J)
LINGUIST 273. The Structure of Russian
(Same as LINGUIST 173.) 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 274A. Field Methods I
(Same as ANTHRO 71, LINGUIST 174.) 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 274B. Field Methods II
Continuation of 274A, with a focus on phonetic topics in a targeted language. Prerequisite: 274A or consent of instructor.
2-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 278. Programming for Linguists
Computer programming techniques for collecting and analyzing data in linguistic research. Introduction to the UNIX environment, Perl programming, and other scripting tools. How to gather, format, and manipulate corpus, field, and experimental data; combine data from multiple sources; and create web surveys. Lab. Knowledge of computer programming not required.
2-4 units, Aut (Coppock, E)
LINGUIST 280. Natural Language Processing
(Same as CS 224N.) Methods for processing human language information and the underlying computational properties of natural languages. Syntactic and semantic processing from linguistic and algorithmic perspectives. Focus is on modern quantitative techniques in NLP: using large corpora, statistical models for acquisition, translation, and interpretation; and representative systems. Prerequisites: CS 121/221 or CS124/LINGUIST 180, CS103, CS109.
3-4 units, Spr (Manning, C)
LINGUIST 281. Speech Recognition and Synthesis
(Same as CS 224S.) Automatic speech recognition, speech synthesis, and dialogue systems. Focus is on key algorithms including noisy channel model, hidden Markov models (HMMs), Viterbi decoding, N-gram language modeling, unit selection synthesis, and roles of linguistic knowledge. Prerequisite: programming experience. Recommended: CS 221 or 229.
2-4 units, Win (Jurafsky, D)
LINGUIST 282. Human and Machine Translation
(Same as LINGUIST 182.) 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.
4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 283. Computational Theories of Syntax
(Same as LINGUIST 183.) 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 285. Finite State Methods in Natural Language Processing
Theory and available technology for finite state language processing. Applications include tokenization, phonological and morphological analysis, disambiguation, and shallow parsing.
3-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 286. Information Retrieval and Web Search
(Same as CS 276.) Text information retrieval systems; efficient text indexing; Boolean, vector space, and probabilistic retrieval models; ranking and rank aggregation; evaluating IR systems. Text clustering and classification: classification algorithms, latent semantic indexing, taxonomy induction; Web search engines including crawling and indexing, link-based algorithms, and web metadata. Prerequisites: CS 107, CS 109, CS 161.
3 units, Aut (Manning, C; Raghavan, P)
LINGUIST 287. Grammar Engineering
(Same as LINGUIST 187.) 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 288. Natural Language Understanding
(Same as CS 224U, LINGUIST 188.) 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 289. Quantitative, Probabilistic, and Optimization-Based Explanation in Linguistics
Capturing the soft constraints inherent in linguistic systems, based on quantitative evidence obtained from linguistic corpora. Computer tools for collecting and modeling data. Emphasis is on syntax.
3-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 291. Linguistics and the Teaching of English as a Second/Foreign Language
(Same as LINGUIST 191.) 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.
4-5 units, Win (Hubbard, P)
LINGUIST 293. Research Seminar in Applied Linguistics
(Same as EDUC 435X.) For graduate students in the schools of Education and Humanities and Sciences who are engaged in research pertaining to applied linguistic topics in original research. Topics: language policies and planning, language and gender, writing and critical thinking, foreign language education, and social applications of linguistic science. (SSPEP)
1-4 units, not given this year
LINGUIST 294. Linguistic Research Discussion Group
Restricted to first-year Linguistics Ph.D. students.
1 unit, Aut (Wasow, T)
LINGUIST 390. M.A. Project
1-3 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)
LINGUIST 394. TA Training Workshop
For second-year graduate students in Linguistics
1 unit, Aut (Rickford, J)
LINGUIST 395A. Research Workshop I
Restricted to students in the doctoral program. Student presentations of research toward qualifying papers.
1-2 units, Spr (Rickford, J)
LINGUIST 395B. Research Workshop II
Restricted to students in the doctoral program. Student presentations of research toward qualifying papers.
1-2 units, Spr (Wasow, T)
LINGUIST 395C. Research Workshop III
Restricted to students in the doctoral program. Student presentations of research toward qualifying papers.
1-2 units, Sum (Staff)
LINGUIST 396. Research Projects in Linguistics
Mentored research project for first-year graduate students in linguistics.
2-3 units, Win (Staff)
LINGUIST 397. Directed Reading
1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)
LINGUIST 398. Directed Research
1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)
LINGUIST 399. Dissertation Research
1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)
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