Undergraduate Courses

AANT 197

Special Topics: Structure of African American English

• Taught periodically; often online
• Prerequisite: None
• As is the case for all human languages, AAE is rule-governed and complex; however, it continues to be plagued by social stigma in many arenas. This course offers detailed information about the sound patterns and sentence structure of AAE and the chance to reflect on mainstream attitudes towards AAE , in light of linguistic evidence.

ALIN/AANT 220

Introduction to Linguistics

• Taught every semester (faculty rotate)
• Prerequisite: None
• This course introduces students to the complexities of human language by focusing on the core areas of linguistics including: phonetics and phonology (speech sounds and their patterns in language) and morphology and syntax (word and sentence structure). We also consider language in the context of social interactions. 

ALIN/AANT 321

​Introduction to Syntax

• Taught every Fall Semester
• Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics
• The human ability to produce and understand an infinite number of different sentences is one of our most remarkable. The study of sentence structure is called syntax, and this course is an introduction to syntactic theory in a generative framework, which aims to formulating a set of rules capable of generating any possible sentence in language. 

Mixed Resource Courses

ALIN/AANT 421
and
ALIN/AANT 521

Advanced Syntax

• Taught every fall semester
• Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics
• Advanced Syntax brings students closer to the state-of-the-art of syntactic analysis in areas such as ellipsis, raising and control, case theory. In this course we dedicate more time to looking at data from diverse languages in order to further develop skills analyzing data from unfamiliar languages and to prepare students to succeed in courses like Field Methods and Linguistic Structures.​

ALIN/AANT 429
and
ALIN/AANT 529

Field Methods

• Taught every fall semester (faculty rotate); language changes year to year
• Prerequisite: Introduction to Syntax and Introduction to Phonology
• The objective of this course is for students to collect primary language data through direct work with a native speaker of a language they have never even encountered. In addition to learning elicitation and transcription techniques, students gain experience forming generalizations about the language data they collect, using that data to test linguistic hypotheses, and developing original linguistic analyses. 

ALIN/AANT 423
and
ALIN/AANT 523

Linguistic Structures 

• Taught every spring semester (faculty rotate); topic changes year to year

• Prerequisite: Introduction to Syntax and Introduction to Phonology
• This course offers students the opportunity to investigate the structure of a language family in greater depth. Students are provided with a reference grammar, which will serve as the primary source for information about the phonological, morphological, and syntactic structure for the language they are assigned. 

Graduate Courses

AANT 506 

Proseminar in Linguistics​

• Taught every spring semester (faculty rotate)

• Prerequisite: Graduate standing
• The study of language comprises one of the four historic branches of anthropology, but over the past half-century, linguistics and anthropology have increasingly diverged from each other. Linguistics as a cognitive science is positivistic, while the anthropological study of language takes an interpretive approach. The purpose of the Proseminar in Linguistics is to introduce students of anthropology to the study of language and to bring different perspectives and methodologies into conversation with each other.