StanfordDepartment of Linguistics
Course Listing Course Descriptions Course Web Pages Bulletin Time Schedule Academic Calendar
The list of courses below is current as of July 25, 2009. Please note that information is subject to change before the start of each quarter so be sure to check Axess at the beginning of each quarter for updates.

2000-2010 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

LINGUIST 1. Introduction to Linguistics
The cognitive organization of linguistic structure and the social nature of language use. Why language learning is difficult. Why computers have trouble understanding human languages. How languages differ from one another. How and why speakers of the same language speak differently. How language is used strategically. GER:DB-SocSci
4 units, Aut (Potts, K), Spr (Fong, V)

LINGUIST 5N. What's Your Accent? Investigations in Acoustic Phonetics
Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. Phonetic variation across accents of English; experimental design; practical experience examining accents of seminar participants; acoustic analysis of speech using Praat. GER:DB-SocSci
3 units, Aut (Sumner, M)

LINGUIST 65/265. African American Vernacular English
(Graduate students register for 265.)
The English vernacular spoken by African Americans in big city settings, and its relation to Creole English dialects spoken on the S. Carolina Sea Islands (Gullah), in the Caribbean, and in W. Africa. The history of expressive uses of African American English (in soundin' and rappin'), and its educational implications. GER:DB-SocSci, EC-AmerCul
3-5 units, Win (Rickford, J)

LINGUIST 66/266. Vernacular English and Reading
(Graduate students register for 266.)
Discusses some of the literature on the relation between use of vernacular English varieties (e.g. African American Vernacular English, Chicano English) and the development of literacy (especially in Standard English). But our primary focus is on improving the reading skills of African American and Latino students in local schools through the Reading Road program developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Students must commit to tutoring one or more elementary students weekly, using the program. L65 AAVE recommended, but not required.
4-5 units, Spr (Rickford, J)

LINGUIST 83N. Translation
Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. What is a translation? The increased need for translations in the modern world due to factors such as tourism and terrorism, localization and globalization, diplomacy and treaties, law and religion, and literature and science. How to meet this need; different kinds of translation for different purposes; what makes one translation better than another; why some texts are more difficult to translate than others. Can some of this work be done by machines? Are there things that cannot be said in some languages? GER:DB-SocSci
3 units, Aut (Kay, M)

LINGUIST 90. Teaching Spoken English
Practical approach to teaching English to non-native speakers. Teaching principles and the features of English which present difficulties. Preparation of lessons, practice teaching in class, and tutoring of non-native speaker.
3-4 units, Spr (Romeo, K)

LINGUIST 105/205A. Phonetics
(Graduate students register for 205A.)
The study of speech sounds: how to produce them, how to perceive them, and their acoustic properties. The influence of production and perception systems on sound change and phonological patterns. Acoustic analysis and experimental techniques. Lab exercises. Prerequisite: 110 or equivalent, or consent of instructor. GER:DB-SocSci
4 units, Win (Sumner, M)

LINGUIST 110. Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology
Differences in the sounds of the world's languages and how these sounds are made by the human vocal tract. Theories that account for cross-linguistic similarities in the face of differences. GER:DBSocSci
4 units, Win (Sumner, M)

LINGUIST 116. Morphology
A survey of words including their structures, pronunciations, meanings, and syntactic possibilities in a wide sampling of languages to provide a laboratory for investigating the nature of morphology.
4 units, Spr (Potts, K)

LINGUIST 119/219. Choosing a Variant
(Graduate students register for 219.)
Assortment of cases (lexical and morphosyntactic) where two or more English expressions serve as alternatives, apparently differing only in stylistic value or sociolinguistic status; explores the semantic, discourse function, syntactic, prosodic, and processing factors that favor the choice of one variant over the other; and evaluates claims about the stylistic values and sociolinguistic status of the variants
2-4 units, Win (Zwicky, A)

LINGUIST 120. Introduction to Syntax
Grammatical constructions, primarily English, and their consequences for a general theory of language. Practical experience in forming and testing linguistic hypotheses, reading, and constructing rules. GER:DB-SocSci
4 units, Aut (Wasow, T)

LINGUIST 130A. Introduction to Linguistic Meaning
Linguistic meaning and its role in communication. Topics include ambiguity, vagueness, presupposition, intonational meaning, and Grice's theory of conversational implicature. Applications to issues in politics, the law, philosophy, advertising, and natural language processing. Those who have not taken logic, such as PHIL 150 or 151, should also enroll in 130C. Pre- or corequisite: 120, or consent of instructor.
4 units, Spr (Potts, C)

LINGUIST 130C. Logic Laboratory
Typically taken in conjunction with 130A/230A.
1 unit, Spr (Potts, C)

LINGUIST 140/240. Language Acquisition I
(Graduate students register for 240.)
Processes of language acquisition in early childhood; stages in development; theoretical issues and research questions. Practical experience in data collection. GER:DB-SocSci
4 units, Aut (Clark, E)

LINGUIST 144. Introduction to Cognitive and Information Sciences
(Same as PHIL 190, PSYCH 132, SYMBSYS 100.)
The history, foundations, and accomplishments of the cognitive sciences, including presentations by leading Stanford researchers in artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. Overview of the issues addressed in the Symbolic Systems major. GER:DBSocSci
4 units, Spr (Wasow, T; McClelland, J)

LINGUIST 150. Language in Society
How language and society affect each other. Class, age, ethnic, and gender differences in speech. Prestige and stigma associated with different ways of speaking and the politics of language. The strategic use of language. Stylistic practice; how speakers use language to construct styles and adapt their language to different audiences and social contexts. GER:DB-SocSci, WIM
4 units, Win (Hodges, A)

LINGUIST 153. Language, Power and Politics
The integral role language plays in politics; how power operates in linguistic practices and political interaction. Critical examination of how language is used to articulate, maintain and subvert relations of power in society, emphasizing language in the media, the political rhetoric associated with war, and the construction of 'truth' in politics. The role of ethnographic analysis in aiding sociolinguistic understandings of how social actors use and (re)interpret political language.
3-4 units, Aut (Hodges, A)

LINGUIST 154/254. Sociolinguistics of Language Contact
(Graduate students register for 254.)
The role of contact between speakers of different languages in processes of language borrowing, convergence, and shift. Attending both to linguistic aspects and social contexts, examine: second-language acquisition, bilingualism, code-switching, lexical and grammatical borrowing, first language attrition, language death, and the creation of new contact varieties such as jargons, mixed languages, pidgins, and creoles. Prerequisite: background in linguistics.
2-4 units, Spr (Rickford, J; Roberts, S)

LINGUIST 156. Language and Gender
The role of language in the construction of gender, the maintenance of the gender order, and social change. Field projects explore hypotheses about the interaction of language and gender. No knowledge of linguistics required. GER:DB-SocSci, ECGender
4 units, Win (Roberts, S)

LINGUIST 160. Introduction to Language Change
(Same as ANTHRO 120.)
Principles of historical linguistics:, the nature of language change. Kinds and causes of change, variation and diffusion of changes through populations, differentiation of dialects and languages, determination and classification of historical relationships among languages, rates of change, the reconstruction of ancestral languages and intermediate changes, parallels with cultural and genetic evolutionary theory, and implications of variation and change for the description and explanation of language in general. Prerequisite: introductory course in linguistics or evolutionary theory. GER:DB-SocSci
4-5 units, Spr (Kiparsky, P)

LINGUIST 167. Languages of the World
The diversity of human languages, their sound systems, vocabularies, and grammars. Tracing historical relationships between languages and language families. Parallels with genetic evolutionary theory. Language policy, endangered languages and heritage languages. Classification of sign languages. GER:DBSocSci
3-4 units, Win (Pereltsvaig, A)

LINGUIST 180/280. From Languages to Information
(Graduate students register for 280. Same as CS 124.)
Automated processing of less structured information: human language text and speech, web pages, social networks, genome sequences, with goal of automatically extracting meaning and structure. Methods include: string algorithms, automata and transducers, hidden Markov models, graph algorithms, XML processing. Applications such as information retrieval, text classification, social network models, machine translation, genomic sequence alignment, word meaning extraction, and speech recognition.
3-4 units, Win (Jurafsky, D)

LINGUIST 181/281. Grammar Engineering
(Graduate students register for 281.)
Hands-on techniques for implementation of linguistic grammars, drawing on grammatical theory and engineering skills. The implementation of constraints in morphology, syntax, and semantics, working within a unification based lexicalist framework. Focus is on developing small grammars for English and at least one other language. Prerequisite: basic syntactic theory or 120. No programming skills required.
1-4 units, Aut (Flickinger, D)

LINGUIST 183/283. Computational Theories of Syntax
(Graduate students register for 283.)
Salient features of modern syntactic theories, including HPSG, LFG, and TAG, motivated by computational concerns. Impact of work within these frameworks on the design of algorithms in computational linguistics, and its influence in both linguistics and computer science. Topics include: notions of unification; unification algorithms and their relation to linguistic theory; agenda-driven chart processing for analysis and synthesis; the interface with morphology, the lexicon, and semantics; and applications, notably machine translation.
3-4 units, Win (Kay, M)

LINGUIST 188/288. Natural Language Understanding
(Graduate students register for 288. Same as CS 224U)
Machine understanding of human language. Computational semantics (determination of word sense and synonymy, event structure and thematic roles, time, aspect, causation, compositional semantics, scopal operators), and computational pragmatics and discourse (coherence, coreference resolution, information packaging, dialogue structure). Theoretical issues, online resources, and relevance to applications including question answering and summarization. Prerequisites: one of LINGUIST 180 / CS 124 / CS 224N,S: and logic such as LINGUIST 130A or B, CS 157, or PHIL150).
3-4 units, Win (Jurafsky, D; MacCartney, W)

LINGUIST 191/291. Linguistics and the Teaching of English as a Second/Foreign Language
(Graduate students register for 291.)
Methodology and techniques for teaching languages, using concepts from linguistics and second language acquisition theory and research. Focus is on teaching English, but most principles and techniques applicable to any language. Optional 1-unit seminar in computer-assisted language learning. GER:DB-SocSci
4-5 units, Win (Hubbard, P; Rylance, C)

LINGUIST 197. Undergraduate Research Seminar
Research goals and methods in linguistics and related disciplines. Students work on a small project to define a focus for their linguistic studies and prepare for honors research. Presentations; final paper.
2 units, Win (Potts, K)

LINGUIST 198. Honors Research
1-15 units, Win (Staff), Spr (Staff)

LINGUIST 199. Independent Study
1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)

LINGUIST 205B. Advanced Phonetics
Prerequisite: LINGUIST 205A.
2-4 units, Aut (Sumner, M)

LINGUIST 210A. Phonology
Introduction to phonological theory and analysis based on crosslinguistic evidence. Topics: phonological representations including features, syllables, metrical structure; phonological processes including assimilation and dissimilation; and phonological typology and universals; optimality theory.
4 units, Aut (Anttila, A)

LINGUIST 211. Metrics
Principles of versification from a linguistic point of view. Traditional and optimality-theoretic approaches. The canonical system of English metrics, and its varieties and offshoots. The typology of metrical systems and its linguistic basis. The ideology of normative prosodic discourse in relation to changing poetic practice.
1-4 units, Aut (Kiparsky, P)

LINGUIST 216. Morphology
How morphology fits into the lexicon and how the lexicon fits into grammar. Inflection and word-formation: blocking, productivity, analogy. Morphological categories. The interaction of morphology with phonology within the lexicon: level-ordering, prosodic morphology. Review of English morphology and analysis of representative material from languages with richer morphologies.
2-4 units, Spr (Anttila, A)

LINGUIST 222A. Foundations of Syntactic Theory I
The roles of the verb and the lexicon in the determination of sentence syntax and their treatment in modern grammatical theories. Empirical underpinnings of core phenomena, including the argument/adjunct distinction, argument structure and argument realization, control and raising, operations on argument structure and grammatical function changing rules. Motivations for a lexicalist approach rooted in principles of lexical expression and subcategorization satisfaction. Prerequisite: 120 or permission of instructor.
2-4 units, Aut (Levin, B)

LINGUIST 222B. Foundations of Syntactic Theory II
The nature of unbounded dependency constructions and their treatment in modern grammatical theories. Filler-gap dependencies, island constraints, and the relation between grammar and processing. Prerequisite: 222A.
2-4 units, Win (Wasow, T)

LINGUIST 225A. Seminar in Syntax: Ellipsis
1-2 units, Spr (Sag, I)

LINGUIST 230A. Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics
Conventional meaning and pragmatic enrichment, with special emphasis on the foundations of semantics and pragmatics, the central problems of the theory, the role of logic and model theory in semantic analysis, and interconnections with other aspects of language and communication.
2-4 units, Win (Potts, C)

LINGUIST 232A. Lexical Semantics
Introduction to issues in word meaning, focused primarily around verbs. Overview of the core semantic properties of verbs and the organization of the verb lexicon. Approaches to lexical semantic representation, including semantic role lists, proto-roles, and causal and aspectual theories of event conceptualization.
2-4 units, Spr (Levin, B)

LINGUIST 232B. Seminar in Lexical Semantics: The Lexical Semantics of Nouns
Exploration of those facets of meaning which affect the naming of entities and the grammatical properties of nouns. Topics covered include artifacts vs. natural kinds, the mass/count noun distinction, individuals vs. collectives, and Roschian categorization. Readings will provide theoretical, typological, psycholinguistic, and anthropological perspectives. May be repeated for credit with different content.
1-4 units, Spr (Levin, B)

LINGUIST 236. Seminar in Semantics: Lexical and Constructional Pragmatics
Case studies in how reliable pragmatic meanings arise from the interactions between conventionalized content, speaker intentions, hearer expectations, and general pragmatic pressures. Emphasis on corpus and psycholinguistic methods. Potential topics: exclamatives, affective demonstratives, discourse particles, appositives, scalar terms, negation; progression of topics to be decided largely by the participants. May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, Aut (Potts, C)

LINGUIST 239. Semantics Research Seminar
Presentation of ongoing research in semantics. May be repeated for credit.
1-2 units, Aut (Levin, B), Win (Levin, B), Spr (Levin, B)

LINGUIST 241. Language Acquisition II
Constructions and the lexicon. May be repeated for credit.
1-4 units, Spr (Clark, E)

LINGUIST 247. Seminar in Psycholinguistics: Information-Theoretic Models of Language and Cognition
(Same as PSYCH 227)
Information theory and its relation to learning and to reference, meaning, and information encoding. Information-theoretic models of linguistic structure at the phonological, morphological, and syntactic levels, and the links between information theory and information structure/clause packaging. The role of uncertainty and uniform information density in sentence processing. May be repeated for credit.
3-4 units, Aut (Jurafsky, D; Ramscar, M)

LINGUIST 250. Sociolinguistic Theory and Analysis
Methods of modeling the patterned variation of language in society. Emphasis is on variation, its relation to social structure and practice, and its role in linguistic change. Intersection between quantitative and qualitative analysis, combining insights of sociology and linguistic anthropology with quantitative linguistic data. Prerequisite: graduate standing in Linguistics or consent of instructor.
4 units, Aut (Rickford, J)

LINGUIST 251. Empirical Approaches to Morphosyntax
Introduction into quantitative and statistical methodology of morphological and syntactic research. Overview of analytical techniques developed for language research in the statistical software package R. Theoretical discussions will be supplemented by examples from corpus-based and experimental studies in morphosyntax as well as by hands-on practical sessions. 2-4 units, Win (Kuperman, V)

LINGUIST 258. Analysis of Variation
The quantitative study of linguistic variability in time, space, and society emphasizing social constraints in variation. Hands-on work with variable data. Prerequisites: 105/205 and 250, or consent of instructor.
1-4 units, Spr (Eckert, P)

LINGUIST 278. Programming for Linguists
Computer programming techniques for collecting and analyzing data in linguistic research. Introduction to the UNIX, regular expressions, and Python scripting. Hands-on experience gathering, formatting, and manipulating corpus, field, and experimental data, combining data from multiple sources, and working with existing tools. Knowledge of computer programming not required.
2-4 units, Aut (Potts, C)

LINGUIST 284. Natural Language Processing
(Same as CS 224N.)
Methods for processing human language information and the underlying computational properties of natural languages. Syntactic and semantic processing from linguistic and algorithmic perspectives. Focus is on modern quantitative techniques in NLP: using large corpora, statistical models for acquisition, translation, and interpretation; and representative systems. Prerequisites: CS 121/221 or CS124/LINGUIST 180, CS103, CS109.
3-4 units, Spr (Manning, C)

LINGUIST 286. Information Retrieval and Web Search
(Same as CS 276.)
Text information retrieval systems; efficient text indexing; Boolean, vector space, and probabilistic retrieval models; ranking and rank aggregation; evaluating IR systems. Text clustering and classification: classification algorithms, latent semantic indexing, taxonomy induction; Web search engines including crawling and indexing, link-based algorithms, and web metadata. Prerequisites: CS 107, CS 109, CS 161.
3 units, Aut (Manning, C; Raghavan, P)

LINGUIST 294. Linguistic Research Discussion Group
Restricted to first-year Linguistics Ph.D. students.
1 unit, Aut (Wasow, T)

LINGUIST 390. M.A. Project
1-3 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)

LINGUIST 394. TA Training Workshop
For second-year graduate students in Linguistics
1 unit, Aut (Levin, B)

LINGUIST 395. Research Workshop
Restricted to students in the doctoral program. Student presentations of research toward qualifying papers.
1-2 units, Spr (Wasow, T)

LINGUIST 396. Research Projects in Linguistics
Mentored research project for first-year graduate students in linguistics.
2-3 units, Win (Staff)

LINGUIST 397. Directed Reading
1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)

LINGUIST 398. Directed Research
1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)

LINGUIST 399. Dissertation Research
1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)

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