Linguistics (LIN)

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.

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.

Word roots in English, their history and development, meanings and combinations, usage and variations. Borrowings into and from English. English as a world language.

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.

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.

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.

In this course, we explore the unique socio-historical contexts of the emergence of historically new languages commonly referred to as creoles, pidgins and mixed languages. We examine their geographical distribution, the particular (socio-)historical events in which they arise and how they relate to the languages that participate in their formation. Along with the historical aspect, we examine the cultural and population mix that also emerges in these contexts, language use in various areas of society (education, administration, rituals, everyday life, entertainment, etc.) and the social structure reflected by their usage. Finally, we explore language attitudes and policies which directly correlate with the history of these languages. Creoles, Pidgins and mixed languages from all over the world will be considered in this course, with a particular emphasis on those that developed in within territories that are now part of the United States such as Hawaiian Pidgin, Gullah-Geechee, Louisiana Creole, and Michif as well as those that developed elsewhere but are now spoken by contemporary communities in the United States such as Haitian Creole and Cape Verdean Creole. This course is the same as RLL 201 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

Introduces the structure of language (phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax), looking at a broad variety of languages; approaches to linguistic analysis and theory.

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.

Expression of meaning and linguistic concepts in a number of native languages of North America. This course is the same as AMS 276 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

Sound structure of English, including the articulation of sounds, phonological patterns and alternations, and dialects. This course is the same as ENG 389 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

Syntax and morphology of English, including lexical and grammatical categories, basic clause structure, and complex sentences. This course is the same as ENG 390 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

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.

Linguistics Topic

Analyzes the social basis of conversational interaction on two levels: the linguistic structures of dialogue and the cultural models underlying interaction.

This course aims to provide undergraduate students with basic understanding of the principles, concepts and tools involved in the construction of semantic analyses of natural language. It investigates the empirical linguistic issues of predicates, modifiers, reference, quantifiers, intensionality, tense, aspect, modality, propositional attitudes, presuppositions, implicatures, topic, focus, and indexicals.

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. This course is the same as PSY 342 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

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.

General overview of the analysis of metaphors and analogy from a linguistic and cognitive perspective.

Use of language in communicative acts (e.g., speech acts, conversational principles, text structure, discourse-governed grammatical alternations, topic, focus, and theme).

Linguistic, psychological, educational, and sociocultural characteristics of bilingualism, multilingualism, and language contact.

Structure of words; different theoretical approaches to the analysis of morphemes, words, and idioms. This course is dual-listed with LIN 510.

Introduces the linguistic and cultural development of the English language from its beginnings to the present. This course is the same as GER 414, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

Fundamentals of syntactic analysis, applied to data from a wide range of languages. Briefly introduces syntactic theory.

Psycholinguistic processes involved in producing and comprehending language, including speech sounds, meaning, lexicon, syntax, discourse, and literacy. This course is dual-listed with LIN 517.

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.

Corpus Linguistics is the use of digitized text (usually of natural language use) for the purpose of research in linguistics and other disciplines that make use of textual language data. Now that enormous amounts of text are available as well as the computational power to process it easily, Corpus Linguistics has become one of the most widespread methods of linguistic investigation in recent years and is increasingly being used beyond linguistics. This area of research requires a diverse range of skills, most notably computer programming and statistical analysis. This course focuses on corpus building, on the formulation of research questions that can be answered with corpora, and on the extraction, summarization, analysis, and visualization of corpus information. This course is dual listed with LIN 514.

Ways in which languages are similar to and different from each other, including morphological categories, word order, case marking, and grammatical relations.

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.

This course provides an introduction to the principles and practice of linguistic fieldwork. Students will work with a user of a language that is unfamiliar language to them in order to create linguistically informed descriptions of the language¿s grammatical properties. The course requires students to plan work sessions with the linguistic consultant, to collect data in a careful and organized fashion, and to integrate knowledge acquired from courses focusing on specific linguistic subfields when analyzing the language data that they will collect.

Fundamental aspects of phonetics: articulation, aerodynamics, acoustics, suprasegmentals, phonetic features, sound change, and universals; focus on cross-linguistic analysis.

Thorough grounding in phonological analysis, using data from a wide variety of languages. Briefly introduces phonological theory. This course is dual-listed with LIN 532.

Current developments in phonological theory, including derivational and non-derivational approaches.

Introduces basic concepts and methods in the analysis of natural language meaning. This course is dual-listed with LIN 538.

Language change, the divergence and convergence of dialects and languages in time and space, and linguistic reconstruction. This course is dual-listed with LIN 539.

Introduces the description of the meaning of sentences; focuses on how the meaning of sentences is built from the meaning of individual words.

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.

Surveys the child's and the L2 adult's linguistic development, primarily in phonology, morpho-syntax, semantics, and discourse; current controversies in acquisition theory. This course is dual-listed with LIN 555.

This course examines the structure of a particular language from a linguistic perspective. The specific language of focus changes each time the course is offered, though the course focuses on the structure of lesser studied languages where no comparable course specific to that language is already offered.

Introduces the field of computational linguistics, which is concerned with the understanding and use of language by computers. This course is the same as CSE 467, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

This course covers key areas in the field Computational Linguistics and considers current challenges for research in this domain, major application areas for automated language processing techniques, the skills needed to make use of language processing algorithms. The course is intended to expand on the content covered in LIN/CSE 467, and the precise topic coverage may be adapted to respond to student interest and emerging trends.

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.

Advanced seminar on various topics.

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.

Guidance in, and supervision of, the preparation of a research essay required to complete a degree with honors. Apply to director of undergraduate studies.

Apply to director of undergraduate studies.