Global Arc

An intermediate language course that aims to strengthen students' communication and comprehension skills. Students will broaden their grammar, vocabulary, and Deaf culture knowledge through viewing and analyzing various ASL literary works and films. Students will also practice holding conversations about a wide variety of topics following Deaf cultural norms through interactive activities.

The world's astonishing linguistic diversity owes to the fact that languages change, and that each language takes a unique and unpredictable trajectory of change. In this course, students explore different models of change and the forces behind it. Employing core methodologies (the Comparative Method and Method of Internal Reconstruction), students learn to analyze phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic language changes. We also learn about the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language and the people who spoke it. Strong focus on applying methods to a variety of data sets.

Where does language come from? How do we know that you can't say it that way? And who has the authority to tell you? Why are some sentences better than others? Why do the same words differently organized have different effects? This course is about human language, its nature, use, users, and origin, based primarily on English. Major topics include the structure of sentences, paragraphs, words; language and thought; and the historical and biological origins of language. Two 90-minute classes.

This course offers intensive practice in American Sign Langauge (ASL) through learning specialized vocabulary, analyzing grammar, developing ASL-English translation skills, and discussing ASL literary works and Deaf culture.

This course explores the history, culture, and language of the Deaf in the United States. The first part of the course focuses on the history of Deaf people in the United States. The second part discusses various aspects of Deaf culture: language, literature, art, politics, etc.. The third part critically examines different issues facing Deaf people here in the United States and around the world. These issues include audism, linguicism, ableism, intersectionality, bioethics, and education.

This course examines the complex mental and neurological processes that underlie linguistic knowledge and behavior. It will be concerned with the precise description and measurement of language activity, with its governing principles, and with available indices for the associated neural computations and their location in the brain. Seminar.

The invention of writing was a major breakthrough in human history since it allowed us to record and convey information beyond our immediate surroundings. This course zooms in on the history and linguistics of writing/reading. The first half of the course discusses the origins and typology of writing systems, as well as the role of phonology, morphology, and other levels of linguistic structure in their design. In the second half, we focus on psycholinguistic aspects of writing/reading, namely, how graphic representations map onto mental representations of words, opening a window into the ways adults read across languages and writing systems.

As educated users of language, many of us have strong feelings about it, such as how we should use it ("That isn't what 'literally' means!") and why. Which of these feelings are valid and which are closer to folklore? In this class, we investigate many preconceptions about language, objectively explore their validity as myth or fact, and make conclusions about how human languages can(not) be described. Topics may include whether: women talk more than men, children learn languages better than adults, legalese is more precise, dolphins use language, all languages/dialects are equally sophisticated, and bilingualism makes you smarter.

This course investigates language in its social, cultural, political, and historical contexts. Does your native language influence your perception, your behavior, and your culture? How does your identity influence properties of your language? What happens when unrelated languages come into contact for prolonged periods? How are new languages born? Why isn't English the official language of the United States, and should it be? We will explore these questions (and more) by engaging with the often contradictory opinions of specialists and the public, as well as with the empirical realities behind these different language situations.

About 2000 of the world's 6000 to 7000 languages are spoken in Africa. The diversity that characterizes these languages is exceptional, but very little is known to non-specialists. In this course, we will learn about the languages of Africa: the diversity of their linguistic structures (including famous features that are found nowhere else, e.g. click consonants), their history and the history of their speakers (from ca 10,000 BP to the (post) colonial period), and their cultural contexts, among other topics. This course has no prerequisites, and is open to anyone with an interest in African languages or the African continent.