The program in Linguistics offers a variety of courses types from large lecture classes to small seminars. Many of the more advanced undergraduate courses are combined with graduate offerings, allowing undergraduates to get early exposure to graduate-style coursework. Faculty also regularly offer independent studies for students interested in areas that do not match the program's regular offerings. The program provides a capstone experience through a senior seminar on field methods, where students work with a speaker of a language that is unfamiliar to them to learn about its grammar. It also offers an internship program where students learn about language teaching in local public schools.
Linguistics (LIN)
Linguistics
609 Baldy HallNorth Campus
Buffalo, NY 14260-1030
Jean-Pierre Koenig
Chair
Chair
The Learning Environment
About Our Facilities
The Department of Linguistics is housed in Baldy Hall, and has several dedicated classrooms and meeting spaces. The department also holds classes in centrally scheduled space throughout the campus, which includes traditional classrooms and lecture halls that can accommodate our the program’s different class structures. Members of the faculty also maintain their own research labs to support work in areas such as phonetics and computational linguistics.
About Our Faculty
The faculty of the Linguistics department includes internationally known and respected scholars whose research specializations include phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, typology, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, sociolinguistics and historical linguistics. Faculty work on a variety of languages including German, Japanese, and Korean as well as languages of the Americas, Africa and the Pacific.
Faculty List Directory
Please visit the Linguistics department website for additional information about our faculty.
LIN Courses
- LIN 104LEC Writing Systems Lecture
Surveys the ways in which natural languages have been, and are today, represented graphically throughout the world. We examine several types of systems (ideographic, logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic) and examine the linguistic principles that underlie each of these systems.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Varies
- LIN 106LEC Languages of the World Lecture
Overview of the languages and language families of the world. This course introduces students to the sounds and structures of a variety of languages and to the history and geography of the people who speak them. Students gain an understanding of the world's linguistic and cultural diversity that will help them better appreciate the relationship between language and the mind.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Fall
- LIN 108LEC Roots of English Lecture
Word roots in English, their history and development, meanings and combinations, usage and variations. Borrowings into and from English. English as a world language.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
- LIN 198SEM UB Seminar Seminar
The one credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps transition to UB through an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 198 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.
Credits: 1
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Other Requisites: Students who have already successfully completed the UB seminar course may not repeat this course. If you have any questions regarding enrollment for this course, please contact your academic advisor.
- LIN 199SEM UB Seminar Seminar
The three credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps students with common learning outcomes focused on fundamental expectations for critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and oral communication, and learning at a university, all within topic focused subject matter. The Seminars provide students with an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 199 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Other Requisites: Students who have already successfully completed the first year seminar course may not repeat this course. If you have any questions regarding enrollment for this course, please contact your academic advisor.
- LIN 200LEC Language in Pluralistic America Lecture
Explores the many varieties of English and the many different languages that co-exist in the United States, including immigrant and indigenous languages, as well as sign languages and contact varieties "born" in the USA. We look at the history of linguistic diversity in this country and its relationship to differences of ethnicity, gender, sexuality and a number of other factors and compare the U.S. situation to that in other parts of the world.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Spring
- LIN 205LEC Introduction to Linguistic Analysis Lecture
Introduces the structure of language (phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax), looking at a broad variety of languages; approaches to linguistic analysis and theory.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
- LIN 207LEC Language, Society, and the Individual Lecture
Explores the many facets of language's role as an interface between the mind of one human being and the minds of others. Investigates how language is supported by and processed in the brain; how it is learned by children and adults; how it can vary and change; and how people and groups use linguistic differences to define and express who they are and how they relate to others. Major topics include language contact, bilingualism, and the relationship between language, culture, and thought.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
- LIN 215LEC Language and Identity at Work Lecture
This course examines how language shapes our social identities such as gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. We will explore how language can be used to display power and leadership, as well as how language might be the site of interactional difficulties. We will examine how certain styles of communication become treated as "problematic" in institutional contexts and what effects this may have. We will focus particularly on real-world challenges and strategies to address these challenges, especially in contexts that have been sites of controversy, such as language policy in education, workplaces, healthcare contexts, legal settings and forensic linguistics, and in the media.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Varies
- LIN 275LEC Languages and Cultures of Native North America Lecture
Expression of meaning and linguistic concepts in a number of native languages of North America.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Spring
- LIN 301LEC Structure of English: The Sound System Lecture
Sound structure of English, including the articulation of sounds, phonological patterns and alternations, and dialects.
- LIN 302LEC Structure of English: Grammar and Lexicon Lecture
Syntax and morphology of English, including lexical and grammatical categories, basic clause structure, and complex sentences.
- LIN 311LEC Variation in English Lecture
Introduction to major regional dialects and contact varieties of English speaking world and to many dimensions of social variation in British and North American English. Hands-on activities and projects will help familiarize students with the theories and methods of dialectology and variations sociolinguistics.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Varies
- LIN 315LEC Language in Its Social Setting Lecture
Analyzes the social basis of conversational interaction on two levels: the linguistic structures of dialogue and the cultural models underlying interaction.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Varies
- LIN 320LEC Language and the Brain Lecture
Localization and lateralization of language in the brain; aphasia, dyslexia, and other neurolinguistic disorders; developmental neurolinguistics.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Varies
- LIN 342LEC Introduction to Cognitive Science Lecture
An interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of knowledge and mind, guided by principles of formal systems and computation. Concepts and approaches from psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and neuroscience.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Spring
- LIN 345LEC Natural Language and the Computer Lecture
Natural language applications such as search engines, and speech recognition play an increasingly important role in society. It seems like a very simple process, and yet it is very difficult. This class addresses the problems faced by computers in dealing with human language.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Varies
- LIN 355LEC Child Language Development Lecture
Acquisition of the structure and function of a child's native language. Relationships among the development of language, cognition, biology, and social interaction.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Spring
- LIN 356LEC An Introduction to Contemporary Theories of Metaphor
- LIN 404LEC Discourse-Pragmatics
- LIN 405LEC Bilingualism and Language Contact Lecture
Linguistic, psychological, educational, and sociocultural characteristics of bilingualism, multilingualism, and language contact.
- LIN 410LEC Morphology Lecture
Structure of words; different theoretical approaches to the analysis of morphemes, words, and idioms.
- LIN 413LEC Language and Cognition
- LIN 414SEM History of the English Language Seminar
Introduces the linguistic and cultural development of the English language from its beginnings to the present.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Varies
- LIN 415LEC Syntax I Lecture
Fundamentals of syntactic analysis, applied to data from a wide range of languages. Briefly introduces syntactic theory.
- LIN 417LEC Psycholinguistics
- LIN 421LEC Linguistic Anthropology Lecture
Relationship between language and culture cross-culturally from the point of view of linguistic anthropology. Relies on primary readings, looking both at descriptive studies of particular languages and cultures, and theoretical issues, specifically the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis.
- LIN 425LEC Typology and Universals
- LIN 426LEC Comparative Syntactic Theories Lecture
The objective of the proposed course is to offer a survey of important modern (i.e. post-1950) approaches to syntactic theory. Theoretical models to be covered include various transformationalist approaches, Head-drive Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar, and typological and functional approaches. The leading ideas of each theoretical framework will be presented, and the frameworks will be compared and contrasted with each other, both in terms of the overall models they adopt and in how they use linguistic data to support their models.
- LIN 431LEC Phonetics Lecture
Fundamental aspects of phonetics: articulation, aerodynamics, acoustics, suprasegmentals, phonetic features, sound change, and universals; focus on cross-linguistic analysis.
- LIN 432LEC Phonology I Lecture
Thorough grounding in phonological analysis, using data from a wide variety of languages. Briefly introduces phonological theory.
- LIN 433LEC Phonology II Lecture
Current developments in phonological theory, including derivational and non-derivational approaches.
- LIN 434LEC Syntax 2 Lecture
Introduces contemporary syntactic theory, including generative and non-generative approaches.
- LIN 437LEC The Syntax of Romance Lecture
Introduces the syntactic structure of Romance languages, what makes them similar (and distinct from other Indo-European language families, e.g. Germanic languages like English) and how they differ from each other. Languages covered include Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish
- LIN 438LEC Semantics Lecture
Introduces basic concepts and methods in the analysis of natural language meaning.
- LIN 439LEC Historical Linguistics Lecture
Language change, the divergence and convergence of dialects and languages in time and space, and linguistic reconstruction.
- LIN 443LEC Semantics II Lecture
Introduces the description of the meaning of sentences; focuses on how the meaning of sentences is built from the meaning of individual words.
- LIN 452LEC Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Lecture
The goal of the proposed course is to offer a solid introduction to Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), a formal theory of grammar which allows for detailed accounts of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The course addresses the historical background and the mathematical foundations, but it focuses on linguistic analysis and on critical assessment of course research.
- LIN 455LEC Language Acquisition
- LIN 465LEC Introduction to Dialectology Lecture
Dialect in its diachronic and synchronic manifestations; social and regional variation; languages in contact; linguistic fieldwork.
- LIN 467LEC Computational Linguistics Lecture
Introduces the field of computational linguistics, which is concerned with the understanding and use of language by computers.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Varies
- LIN 493LEC Sociolinguistics Lecture
Language structure and development in social contexts of speech communities; processes of linguistic change; linguistic behavior as an index of social status; problems of language or dialect minorities.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Spring
- LIN 494SEM Senior Seminar Seminar
Advanced seminar on various topics.
Credits: 3
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Varies
- LIN 496TUT Internship Tutorial
Language teaching experience either in a UB department (Linguistics, a language department, English Language Institute, etc.), in the Buffalo public schools, or at a public service agency (International Institute of Buffalo, Herman Badillo Institute, Literacy Volunteers, etc.). Open to majors and non-majors. Apply to director of undergraduate studies.
Credits: 2 - 6
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer
- LIN 497TUT Honors Thesis Tutorial
Guidance in, and supervision of, the preparation of a research essay required to complete a degree with honors. Apply to director of undergraduate studies.
Credits: 3 - 6
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
- LIN 499TUT Independent Study Tutorial
Apply to director of undergraduate studies.
Credits: 1 - 12
Grading: Graded (GRD)
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Complementary Programs
- Anthropology BA
- Anthropology Minor
- Asian Studies Minor
- Computer Science Minor
- Education Minor
- Speech and Hearing Minor
- Spanish BA
- Communication BA
- Asian Studies BA
- Philosophy BA
- Psychology BA
- Psychology BS
- Speech and Hearing Science BA
- Linguistics BA - Language and Cognition Concentration