Graduate Program in Linguistics at CUNY

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Spring 2007 Schedule

Download the (tentative) course schedule in PDF

72500 Sentence Processing
Monday 2:00 - 4:00 pm, 3 credits, Prof Fodor

We will study the process by which perceivers assign syntactic structure and meaning to sentences (word sequences). The aim is to discover how the knowledge of language represented in the mental competence grammar is put to work in performance. We will read the early classic papers on parsing models as background for studying current theories. We will consider sentence processing at the interfaces how is LF computed? How does prosody affect syntactic structure assignment? Data will be drawn from experimental studies of Croatian, Dutch, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and other languages as well as English.

86100 Seninar: Second Language Acquisition
Monday 4:15 - 6:15 pm, 3 credits, Prof Martohardjono

The course discription will be posted soon. Stay tuned.

79300 Semantics of Imaginative Discourse
Monday 4:15 - 6:15 pm, 3 credits, Prof Orenstein

The course will be organized about four topics. What is fiction? Can there be a systematic account of how our imaginings about a work of fiction are generated? What is the sematic/ontological status of objects peculiar to fiction such as Emma Bovary and Lilliput.? What are the issues in formulating a correct theory of metaphor? We will concentrate on current research in the semantics and pragmatics of fiction and metaphor.

1.) The nature of fiction. Walton characterizes fiction in terms of a propositional attitude involved in its uptake. Currie, in opposition to writers such as Walton and Searle, relies heavily on a Gricean model of communication according to which fiction emerges as a speech act.
2.) How can something be "true in the story" when it is not explicitly stated in the text? Thus, nowhere in the text of Madame Bovary is it actually stated either that her husband had two legs or that he ate pizza, yet the first is sanctioned by the text and the second isn't. We will consider David Lewis's classic piece "Truth in Fiction" in which he develops two principles for settling such questions. Walton and Currie contribute significantly to the discussion. Walton argues that there can be no satisfactory principles for generating such "fictional truths", while Currie making use of Gricean intentions and themes from the logic of belief sentences provides the most refined version of such a principle in the literature.
3.) What is the correct semantics for fictional names e.g., "Emma Bovary"? Are there fictional characters as the semantic values of such names, and if so, are they best thought of in terms of possible world semantics [Kripke maintains that fictional objects don't merely happen not to exist, but that they could not possibly exist], Meinongian semantics, or in some other way?
4.) The question of which semantic framework is right for figurative language, such as irony and metaphor, will be dealt with in the last section of the course. Here we will discuss the views of Searle, Davidson, Fogelin, and Lakoff among others. Some texts: Gregory Currie, The Nature of Fiction, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990 Kendalll Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe; On the Foundations of the Representational Arts, Harvard Univ. Press, 1990. Robert J. Fogelin, Figuratively Speaking, Yale Univ. Press, 1986. Steven Davis ed. Pragmatics, Oxford University Press, 1991 Papers by John Searle, Peter Strawson, Gareth Evans, Notes from Kripke's Lectures on Fiction, David Lewis, Donald Davidson etc.

71300 Phonology I
(cross-listed with Ling 736, Phonology I Practicum)
Thursday 2:00 - 4:00 pm, 3 credits, Prof Bradley

(this course info is from the course listing for Spring 2006. The updated info will be posted soon)

This course, assuming no more than general familiarity with phonological concepts, offers an intensive introduction to the formal apparatus of generative phonology, with an emphasis the development of fluency in analyzing phonological data. The presentation of material in class therefore assumes concurrent registration in the associated practicum (Ling 73600: Phonology Practicum, Monday 6:30-8:30 p.m., 1 credit).
The basics of phonological description and theory -- inventories, distinctive features, natural classes, alternations, levels of representation, rule formulation - are first introduced within the linear framework of classic generative phonology. With these basics in place, we motivate additions to the formalism - feature geometry, underspecification, autosegmental architecture , metrical representation -- in terms of their better capture of common phonological phenomena. Finally, we review an altogether different analytic framework, Optimality Theory.
Textbooks
Kenstowicz, M. (1994). Phonology in Generative Grammar. Cambridge MA: Blackwell.
Roca, I., & Johnson, W. (1999). A Workbook in Phonology. Malden MA: Blackwell.
Preliminary Reading
Although a course in linguistic phonetics is not a prerequisite for the course -- because phonology is not phonetics -- students without prior exposure may benefit from a review of basic notions and terminology. To this end, copies of Chapters 1, 3 and 5 of Roca and Johnson's (1999) "A Course in Phonology" (an undergraduate text) are recommended. See the department's readings cabinet.
Course Assessment
Regular homework assignments (phonology problem sets), plus mid-term and final take-home examinations.

72200 Syntax II
(cross-listed with Ling 736, Syntax II Practicum)
Wednesday 4:15 - 6:15 pm, 3 credits, Prof den Dikken
The prerequisite for this course is LING 72100 (Syntax I)

(this course info is from the course listing for Spring 2006. The updated info will be posted soon)

From Principles-and-Parameters Theory to Minimalism
Taking the end-point of Syntax I as a starting-point (and as a prerequisite for registration), this course takes its participants from Chomsky's (1981) original Government-Binding Theory all the way to the most recent incarnation of the principles-and-parameters approach to generative grammar: the minimalist program (Chomsky 1995). Along the way, it addresses, among other things: (i) Lasnik & Saito's (1984) theory of "gamma-marking" and intermediate trace deletion at LF, (ii) Chomsky's (1986-Barriers) densely successive-cyclic derivations for A'-movement via intermediate VP-adjunction, (iii) his unification of the theories of government and bounding, (iv) his analysis of A-movement and its dependency on head-chains, (v) the perspective on the general interdependency of A-movement and head-movement that the "equidistance" based theory of locality in Chomsky (1993) gives rise to, (vi) the general premises of the minimalist program of Chomsky (1993) and Chomsky (1995), (vii) the reduction of the phrase-structure component of the theory ("bare phrase structure"), and (viii) the connection between hierarchical relationships between constituents and their linear sequencing ("antisymmetry"; Kayne 1994).

The course presupposes a solid command of the issues addressed in Syntax I (LING 72100), but no specific knowledge of syntactic theory beyond that point.

Literature
The Haegeman (1994) textbook that was used for Syntax I will continue to be used in the first weeks of classes; beyond that point, we will rely primarily on Chomsky (1995), The Minimalist Program (MIT Press) and materials that will be provided in class.

72400 Semantics II
(cross-listed with Ling 736, Semantics II Practicum)
Monday 6:30 - 8:30 pm, 3 credits, Prof McClure
Course website

A continuation of Semantics I. Lambda abdtraction, type theory, type shifting, intensionality, Montague's PTQ.

72700 First Language Acquisition
Tuesday 4:15 - 6:15 pm, 3 credits, Prof Valian

This course emphasizes readings and discussion of: the child's initial state and evidence for it, the role of input, and the syntax acquisition mechanism. We will contrast two broad views of acquisition. In one, the child begins with abstract specifications of syntactic features and the form of the grammar and must learn language-specific details. In the other, the child begins with lexically-specific details and builds abstractions over time. What types of empirical evidence can help us decide between these two views?

Specific topics will include: syntactic categories (ranging from proto-categories in infancy to full-fledged categories in 3-year-olds), the content of early syntactic representations (underspecification vs misspecification), early word combinations, errors of omission and commission, the role of performance limitations, the role of parental input, and models of learning.

Classes will use a combined lecture-seminar format. Students will read original theoretical, empirical, and computational articles. Students will also a) perform some transcription and data analysis, b) write a 5-10 page midterm paper and a critical review of a recent journal article, c) make one class presentation, and d) write a final paper or take a final examination. Students are encouraged to think of their final paper as preparation for a qualifying paper.
An important goal of the course is for students to think like researchers in language acquisition. By transcribing and analyzing child data, students will learn how to ask and answer questions in language acquisition.

81500 Advanced Syntax
Wednesday 6:30 - 8:30 pm, 3 credits, Prof den Dikken

The course info will be posted soon. Stay tuned!

73600 Phonology I Practicum
(cross-listed with Ling 713, Phonology I)
Monday 6:30 - 8:30 pm, 1 credit, Prof Bradley

73600 Syntax II Practicum
(cross-listed with Ling 722, Syntax II)
Time TBA, 1 credit, Prof den Dikken

73600 Semantics II Practicum
(cross-listed with Ling 724, Semantics II)
Time TBA, 1 credit, Prof McClure

75600 Studies in Hispanic Sociolinguistics: Spanish in the U.S.
Wednesday 4:15 - 6:15 pm, 3 credits, Prof Otheguy

The purpose of the seminar is to learn to carry out research on the Spanish used in the US under the paradigm of variationist linguistics and/or that of the sociology of language. The student will organize and carry out a small research project on a variable structure of the Spanish spoken or written in New York or other parts of the US, on attitudes toward this variety, on its social and demographic distribution, on code selection, on maintenance and shift, or on other relevant topic. A second purpose of the course is for the student to become familiar with the salient works of the research literature on US Spanish. The instructor will conduct classes in Spanish. Questions in class, and class dialogue in general, can be in either English or Spanish according to the individual student's preference. Written work can be in English or Spanish. Some readings will be in English and some in Spanish.

79100 Histroy of the Spanish Language
Monday 6:30 - 8:30 pm, 3 credits, Prof.del Valles

The course info will be posted soon. Stay tuned!

78100 Computational Linguistics
Thursday 2:00 - 4:00 pm, 3 credits, Prof Sakas
(cross listed with CSC84001)

Course Description: Computer learning is one of the core areas of artificial intelligence. Computer learning involving natural (human) language is no exception; most all recent progress in computational linguistics involves some degree of computer-automated learning. Through a series of case studies, this course will introduce students to a wide variety of computational models of natural language acquisition. The studies will be drawn from diverse paradigms including: probabilistic language models, connectionist (neural network) learning, statistical regular and context-free grammar induction, Gold-style learnability, and learning within Chomsky's principles and parameters framework. Although the focus will be on computational models that mirror human language abilities (e.g., models of first language acquisition) we will also touch on topics that are components of popular language engineering tasks (e.g., web page/document clustering).

Discussion topics will include:
Why would a human librarian with complete knowledge of the web (and, of course, natural language) be a better search advisor than a Google keyword search? How effective can a computational model of language learning be that does nothing more than establish a set of patterns that exist in a large corpus of words? In the face of ambiguous (and/or noisy) information to what extent would 'guessing' be an effective strategy given a particular language learning task? To what degree can statistical models of language acquisition supplement or replace an innately endowed language faculty? Assuming an innately endowed language faculty, what role might statistical learning play in helping to 'trigger' the correct language facts that are exhibited by the language being encountered by the learner?

Prerequisites: Programming skills are not required, although students with programming skills will be expected to implement several of the learning models. Also, although some familiarity with elementary probability theory would be helpful, being comfortable with numbers and with an 'algorithmic approach' is all that is required since the computational methodology necessary to complete the assigned exercises will be covered in lecture.

Requirements: Several short assignments, midterm and a final project

Audience: The course will be of interest to students in linguistics, computer science, developmental psychology and philosophy who are attracted to specific issues in language learnability or in general, the use of computational learning technology in the cognitive sciences.

79200 World Englishes
Tuesday 4:15 - 6:15 pm, 3 credits, Prof Canagarajah

About twenty years after Braj Kachru made a case for localized varieties of English with the neologism Englishes, we are in the cusp of another disciplinary shift that further pluralizes the language. Researchers are beginning to study the ways in which English increasingly serves as a contact language between mulitlingual people for transnational relations. Labeling it lingua franca English (LFE), scholars have begun to describe a hybrid variety that represents the values and identities of the participants, while facilitating communication across cultures. We have new questions about defining ownership, language standards, nativeness, and speech community in the context of the changes inspired by globalization. In this course, we will discuss how varieties such as Indian English and Nigerian English differ from British and American English; the challenges posed in researching and describing new varieties of English; ideological positions on the role of English in globalization; concerns about pedagogy and testing in a pluralistic environment; and policy considerations for diverse communities in providing a place for English in their national life. Whereas the research on World Englishes has hitherto focused on spoken discourse, we will pay equal attention to written discourse in this course. In addition to national varieties, we will also treat regional, class, and ethnic variants of English as part of the World Englishes paradigm. The reading includes the following texts: World English: A Study of its Development, Brutt-Griffler, Multilingual Matters, 2002; Reclaiming the Local in Language Policy and Practice, Canagarajah (ed.), Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005; The Language Revolution, Crystal, Polity, 2004; World Englishes: A Resource Book for Students, Jenkins, Routledge, 2003. Assignments consist of short response essays, topical discussions in the electronic Blackboard, and a final essay that proposes a theoretical or empirical project on a topic you are interested in exploring further.

80300 Research Method Psycholinguistics/Cognitive Linguistics
Tuesday 2:00 - 4:00 pm, 3 credits, Prof Bradley

The intelligent consumer of the applied literature in linguistics - whether in experimental or developmental psycholinguistics, or in any field where the evaluation of empirical research is at stake - is well-versed in the underlying principles of experimental design, methodology, and quantitative analysis. This course imparts knowledge of such principles, by surveying a range of methods, from the familiar to the esoteric, currently in use in empirical research on language perception, production, and acquisition. The course includes modules on the established conventions and on the steps involved in gathering data on participants language histories, on developing and piloting experimental procedures, designs, and materials sets, on understanding the assumptions underlying the analysis of complex designs, and on reporting findings. The course will draw on examples of research in sentence processing, generally, and will give particular emphasis to studies assessing performance in second language learners and bilinguals. The course is intended not only for those students who have already embarked on their own projects (or are about to do so), but also for those who have plans (however modestly formulated) for some such research in the future. For students at all levels, the course will provide a suite of skills critical for conducting independent research, and for understanding and evaluating the research of their colleagues. The use of technology to perform research-related tasks will be emphasized, though no background knowledge in any particular software is assumed. The types of software that students will become familiar with include: tools to display experimental stimuli and record participant responses, spreadsheet tools, voice recording processing and speech analysis tools, statistical analysis tools, and tools used to generate visual displays of quantitative information.

84600 Speech Act Theory
Tuesday 4:15 - 6:15 pm, 3 credits, Prof Fiengo

This course will address the relationship between linguistic theory and language use. Among the questions raised will be: What are grammars theories of? What are the data of linguistic theory? What is the relationship between the sentences linguists study and the sentences that are uttered by speakers? What is the relationship between grammatical form and the functions of sentences?

The writings of Austin (How to do things with words) and Searle (Speech Acts) will be discussed in detail, along with a new book by Fiengo (Asking questions). Among the specific topics will be the nature of reference and of predication.

There are no prerequisites; the course requirement is a research paper.

89900 Independent Research, 1-6 credits

90000 Dissertation Supervision, Level 3 PhD Students Only, 1 credit