Linguistics (Tri-Co)

Department Website:
https://www.haverford.edu/linguistics

There are 7,000 languages in the world, and we’re interested in studying all of them. Linguistics is the scientific study of language—we develop techniques to explore patterns that all human languages have in common and investigate the ways in which each is unique. Our explorations yield insights not only about languages, but also about the nature of the human mind.

Linguistics is also relevant to other disciplines, such as psychology, philosophy, mathematics, computer science, sociology and anthropology, and some of our students choose to double major with one of them.

Learning Goals

  • Understand the structure of human language, how human languages work, and how humans use their languages;
  • Understand the structures of language including phonology, syntax, and semantics, and analyze the interplay between them;
  • Understand how linguists use various theories and models to represent language;
  • Understand how language influences the way we interact with each other and with the larger world around us, including cultural and sociolinguistic context of speech communities;
  • Understand how language ideologies and linguistic prejudices create and reinforce hegemonic power structures;
  • Gain significant experience with the grammar of a non-Indo European language, in order to observe some of the typological diversity of human language;
  • Learn to work with speaker/signers of a language as a means of understanding language;
  • Learn to work with and critically evaluate published sources as a means of understanding language;
  • Understand appropriate methodologies for collecting linguistic data, including best practices for responsible and ethical collection, storage, and use of data in ways that respect the relevant speakers and their communities, cultures, and needs;
  • Organize data and observe patterns, puzzles, etc. in data;
  • Formulate and evaluate research questions, hypotheses, and analyses;
  • Articulate research questions, hypotheses, and analyses clearly in writing and in presentations.

Haverford’s Institutional Learning Goals are available on the President’s website, at http://hav.to/learninggoals.

Major Requirements

The Tri-Co Linguistics Department offers two major tracks: (i) Linguistics and (ii) Linguistics & Language (often called Ling/Lang). Students complete the Linguistics major with a total of eight credits, and the Linguistics and Language major with a total of twelve credits. 

Mandatory Foundation Courses (three credits)

Students in both major tracks must complete one course from each of the following categories:

  • Forms: LING H113 or LING S050 (Introduction to Syntax)
  • Meanings: LING H114 or LING S028/ S040 (Introduction to Semantics)
  • Sounds: LING H115 or LING S045 (Phonetics and Phonology)

Language, Culture, and Society (one credit)

  • LING S021 (Anthropological Linguistics)
  • LING S025 /LING H125 (Sociolinguistics)
  • LING S041 (Dialects of American English)
  • LING S044 (Linguistic Discrimination)
  • LING S046 /LING H146 (Linguistic Diversity)
  • LING/ANTH B281 (Language in the Social Context)
  • LING H214/SPAN H314 (Spanish in the US)
  • Other courses which are not being used to fulfil another major requirement may be used here with approval of the chair.

Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language Courses (one credit)

Students in both major tracks must complete one course from the Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language series, which include the following classes, among others:

  • LING H215 (Structure of Colonial Valley Zapotec)
  • LING H282 (Structure of Chinese)
  • LING S061 (Structure of Navajo)
  • LING S067 (Structure of Wamesa)
  • LING S068 (Structure of Kyrgyz)

Elective Courses (LING majors only, two credits)

Two elective courses in linguistics or related fields are required for Linguistics majors.  You can take a second Language, Culture and Society course &/or a second Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language course and have the course(s) count as an elective. (Ling/Lang majors are not required to take elective courses, but have an additional language requirement, see below.) Electives include the following courses, among others:

  • LING B101 or LING H101 (Introduction to Linguistics)
  • LING H204 (Topics in Introductory Programming: Language and Computation)
  • CMSC/LING H208 (Speech Synthesis and Recognition)
  • LING/ENGL H213 (Inventing [the] English)
  • LING/PSYC H238 (The Psychology of Language)
  • PHIL H253 (Analytic Philosophy of Language)
  • PHIL H260 (Historical Introduction to Logic)
  • LING/CMSC H325 (Computational Linguistics)
  • LING/SPAN H365 (The Politics of Language in the Spanish-Speaking World)

Language Courses (LING/LANG majors only, six credits)

This requirement applies only to Linguistics and Language majors, not Linguistics majors. 

  • Ling/Lang majors must study two different languages with three credits from each, with at least one credit at the third-year level for each of the two languages.

Thesis (one credit)

A one-credit senior thesis in the fall semester of the senior year is required for majors in both tracks. The thesis constitutes the comprehensive requirement for the major.

Note: Majors in the Tri-Co Linguistics Department can receive up to two elective credits for pre-approved courses taken outside the Tri-Co. Interested students should seek consultation with, and approval from, the Bi-Co chair of the department prior to enrolling in the courses, and be ready to provide course descriptions during consultation and transcripts afterwards for proper credit counting towards the major.

Senior Project

Majors in our department are recommended to take the Junior Seminar LING S090 (Advanced Research Methods in Linguistics), in the spring term of their junior year. This course is designed to expose students to the classic literature on the major subfields in linguistics, familiarizing them with theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and bibliographies, culminating in the selection of a potential thesis topic, working and reworking on a thesis abstract with references. Students are also encouraged to take an upper level seminar course in the subfield where they will most likely choose a thesis topic.

Linguistics majors write their thesis in the fall semester of their senior year. All Bi-Co linguistics majors should pre-register for LING H399 in the spring of their junior year. They will be assigned an appropriate faculty advisor once they choose a thesis topic and the topic is approved. In the topic proposal, students need to list at least two relevant courses related to the topic. (LING S090 could be listed as one of the two.) If their assigned faculty advisor is from Swarthmore, majors will then switch to the appropriate senior seminar section of LING S100, which can be done in the beginning of the fall semester of their senior year.

Senior Project Learning Goals

There are multiple acceptable approaches to a linguistics thesis, and our learning goals reflect these possibilities. 

All students will: 

  • • Make considered choices on style, formatting, and citation practices in consultation with their advisor; 
  • • Gain familiarity and meaningfully engage with the essential foundational and advanced literature relating to their topic; 
  • • Select and correctly implement appropriate methods, formal theories, and technologies; 
  • • Produce insights into their topic. 

Where appropriate, students will: 

  • • Demonstrate an understanding of appropriate methods for gathering data; 
  • • Understand the best practices for responsible and ethical gathering, archiving, and use of data in ways that respect the relevant speakers/signers and their communities and cultures; 
  • • Be able to organize data and observe patterns, puzzles, etc. in that data; 
  • • Construct and articulate clear hypotheses and analyses for the observed patterns in the data; 
  • • Evaluate hypotheses and convincingly argue why a chosen hypothesis is superior to plausible alternatives.

Senior Project Assessment

Faculty members are assigned as first and second readers to each thesis after the senior major has decided on a topic in the beginning of the fall semester.

The senior thesis is evaluated on the following criteria:

Fundamentals:

  • Does the student demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of elementary concepts in linguistics, such as the underlying goals of linguistic inquiry, basic units of linguistic analysis (phonemes, morphemes, constituency, entailment, etc.), and distinctions important to linguistics (prescriptive/descriptive, competence/ performance, phoneme/allophone, form/function, etc.)? Does the student demonstrate familiarity with essential literature?

Tools and Methods:

  • Does the student select and correctly implement methods and formal theories appropriate for their work? Does the student correctly use standard, professional linguistics formatting and notation for transcriptions, glosses, OT tableaux, syntactic structures, semantic interpretations, citations and references, etc.? Does the student correctly use standardly accepted technical jargon (“allomorph,” “adjunct,” “implicature,” etc.) rather than vague descriptions or nonstandard terminology? Does the student correctly use appropriate linguistics technology (Praat, ELAN, etc.)? At the level of technical details, does the student’s work look like it was written by a linguist (rather than, say, by a historian or chemist)?

Ethics:

  • Does the student demonstrate a full understanding of best practices for responsible and ethical collection, storage, and use of data in ways that respect the relevant speakers and their communities and cultures? Does the student demonstrate a commitment to appropriate collaboration with speakers and communities?  (N.B. This learning outcome may not be relevant to work that does not use primary data, in which case, this should normally be assessed as “N/A”.)

General Scientific Methodology:

  • Data Collection and Presentation
    Does the student demonstrate an understanding of proper scientific methodology for collecting data (survey design, selection of participants, establishing controls, eliciting useful contrasts and paradigms, etc.)? Does the student organize data in meaningful ways that clearly demonstrate important patterns (minimal pairs, morphological paradigm tables, logical blocks of related utterances, etc.)?
  • Analysis
    Does the student construct useful, appropriate hypotheses to explain the observed patterns in the data? Are these hypotheses rigorously and clearly formulated? Does the student sufficiently explore logically plausible alternative hypotheses? Does the student convincingly argue for why their hypotheses are superior to the logical alternatives?

Critical Thinking Skills:

  • Advanced Literature
    Does the student draw upon relevant advanced literature in meaningful ways? Does the student demonstrate an understanding of crucial data, analyses, results, models, predictions, etc. from this advanced literature?
  • Innovation
    Is the student’s work innovative in some way that makes it stand out as more than just superficial description and/or straightforward application of tried-and-true analytical tools?  Does the student articulate novel and insightful claims about a specific language, language itself, or linguistics more broadly? Is the student’s work noteworthy, at least in part, because of the student’s particular insights?

Quality of Prose:

  • Coherence, Structure, Fluidity, etc.
    Is the student’s prose professional and polished, in line with general standards of academic writing? Is the student’s prose clear and logically structured? Are individual sentences coherent and grammatical? Do sentences and paragraphs flow fluidly from one to the next?  Does the student’s prose strike an appropriate balance between being concise and being sufficient? Would the student’s prose pass muster for publication in a journal?

Requirements for Honors

Honors will be granted, at the discretion of the faculty members, to those senior majors who have consistently distinguished themselves in major-related course work (typically with a GPA of 3.7 or higher), active and constructive participation in the intellectual life of the department, and an outstanding senior thesis. A senior major may receive high honors if deemed exceptional in all three areas.

Minor Requirements

Students may minor in linguistics through Haverford by completing six credits in the following four areas:

Mandatory Foundation Courses (three credits)

  • Forms: LING H113 or LING S050 (Introduction to Syntax)
  • Meanings: LING H114 or LING S040 (Introduction to Semantics)
  • Sounds: LING H115 or LING S045 (Phonetics and Phonology)

Structure of a Non-Indo-European Language Courses (one credit)

  • LING H215 (Structure of Colonial Valley Zapotec)
  • LING H282 (Structure of Chinese)
  • LING S061 (Structure of Navajo)
  • LING S067 (Structure of Wamesa)
  • LING S068 (Structure of Kyrgyz)

Language, Culture, and Society (one credit)

  • LING S021 (Anthropological Linguistics)
  • LING S025 /LING H125 (Sociolinguistics)
  • LING S041 (Dialects of American English)
  • LING S044 (Linguistic Discrimination)
  • LING S046 /LING H146 (Linguistic Diversity)
  • LING/ANTH B281 (Language in the Social Context)
  • Other courses which are not being used to fulfil another major requirement may be used here with approval of the chair.

Elective Courses (choose one from the following sample of relevant courses among many others):

  • LING B101 or LING H101 (Introduction to Linguistics)
  • LING H204 (Topics in Introductory Programming: Language and Computation)
  • CMSC/LING H208 (Speech Synthesis and Recognition)
  • LING/ENGL H213 (Inventing [the] English)
  • LING/PSYC H238 (The Psychology of Language)
  • PHIL H253 (Analytic Philosophy of Language)
  • PHIL H260 (Historical Introduction to Logic)
  • LING/CMSC H325 (Computational Linguistics)
  • LING/SPAN H365 (The Politics of Language in the Spanish-Speaking World)

The Tri-Co Linguistics Department accepts all linguistics courses offered at Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford for credit in their appropriate category.  

Note: Minors in the Tri-Co Linguistics Department can receive up to two elective credits for pre-approved courses taken outside the Tri-Co. Interested students should seek consultation with, and approval from, the Bi-Co chair of the department prior to enrolling in the courses, and be ready to provide course descriptions during consultation and transcripts afterwards for proper credit counting towards the minor.

Study Away & Study Abroad

Majors in the Tri-Co Linguistics Department can receive up to two elective credits for pre-approved courses taken at departments on the College’s list of study away or study abroad programs. Interested students should seek consultation with, and approval from, the Bi-Co chair of the department prior to studying abroad, and be ready to provide course descriptions during consultation and transcripts afterwards for proper credit counting towards the major.

Prizes

The Tri-Co Department of Linguistics may, at its discretion, award the following prizes.

The "Best Theoretical Linguistics Thesis Prize" is awarded to the senior whose thesis exemplifies outstanding work in area of theoretical linguistics.

The "Best Descriptive Linguistics Thesis Prize" is awarded to the senior whose thesis exemplifies outstanding work in area of descriptive linguistics.

The "Best Applied Linguistics Thesis Prize" is awarded to the senior whose thesis exemplifies outstanding work in area of applied linguistics.

Affiliated Faculty

Jane Chandlee
Associate Professor of Linguistics (TriCo)

Noah Elkins
Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Shizhe Huang
The C.V. Starr Professor of Asian Studies; Professor of Chinese and Linguistics; Director of Chinese Language Program

Brook Lillehaugen
Associate Professor and Haverford Chair of Linguistics (TriCo)

Suzanne Lindell
Amanuensis

Ana López-Sánchez
Associate Professor of Spanish

Amanda Payne
Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Faculty at Bryn Mawr

Deepak Kumar
Professor of Computer Science

Amanda Weidman
Associate Professor of Anthropology

Faculty at Swarthmore

Kirby Conrod
Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Rikker Dockum
Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Michael Donovan
Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Melanie Drolsbaugh
Language Lecturer in Linguistics

Jeremy Fahringer
Laboratory Technologist & Instructor

Theodore Fernald
Professor of Linguistics

Nicté Fuller Medina
Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics

Emily Gasser
Associate Professor and Chair of Linguistics

David Harrison
Professor of Linguistics

Donna Jo Napoli
Professor of Linguistics and Social Justice

Jonathan North Washington
Associate Professor of Linguistics

Courses at Haverford

LING H010  INTRODUCTION TO ZAPOTEC  (0.5 Credit)

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course is an introduction to Dizhsa (San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec; Valley Zapotec) and is designed to give you an introduction to Dizhsa, an Indigenous language of Oaxaca, Mexico. Students will gain skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing and will learn about cultural context in both Oaxaca and the diaspora. As a 0.5 unit course, this course does not satisfy the language requirement. This course is funded through the Mellon Together with Humanities grant. Pre-requisite(s): LING 215 (can also be a co-requisite) or instructor consent. Lottery Preference: This course is funded by the Mellon Together with Humanities grant and may be offered for up to three years. It is funded under the schema of "course cluster" and will be in a cluster with Ling 215. Thus, students in Ling 215 should have priority in enrollment. Any open seats could be open lotteried.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

LING H011  AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE I  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

Introduction to learning and understanding American Sign Language (ASL), and the cultural values and rules of behavior of the American Deaf community. Includes receptive and expressive readiness activities; sign vocabulary; grammatical structure; facial expressions (emotional & grammatical), body/spatial movement, gestures; receptive and expressive fingerspelling; and deaf culture do's and don'ts. Specific concepts/topics include the number/letter basics, identifying people, activities, places, and family. This course is funded by Mellon Together with Humanities Grant. Can count towards Haverford's Language Requirement. Pre-requisite(s): WRPR 118 (can also be a co-requisite) or instructor consent. Lottery Preference: This course is funded by the Mellon Together with Humanities grant and may be offered for up to three years. It is funded under the schema of "course cluster" and will be in a cluster with a first year writing seminar on Disability and Difference.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

LING H012  AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE II  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

In ASL II, students expand their conversational range from talking about themselves to talking about other people, and about activities inside and outside the home along with time/ calendar/sequencing concepts. Students also gain skill in reading and giving directions along with making requests as well as agreeing to requests with conditions. Other concepts include opinions, qualities, and pricing. Students develop polite conversation strategies to navigate Deaf space and to handle interruptions. Grammar topics include retelling and using role shifting in narratives, agreement verbs, and negations. Can count towards Haverford's Language Requirement. Pre-requisite(s): ASL I

(Offered: Spring 2025)

LING H101  INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS  (1.0 Credit)

Noah Elkins, Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

An introductory survey of linguistics as a field. This course examines the core areas of linguistic structure (morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics), pragmatics, and language variation in relation to language change. The course provides rudimentary training in the analysis of language data, and focuses on the variety of human language structures and on the question of universal properties of language.

(Offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2025)

LING H113  INTRODUCTION TO SYNTAX  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities; Symbolic Reasoning
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course is a hands-on investigation of sentence structures in human language. This is a participation intensive course. Collectively, the class will develop an increasingly complex syntactic theory starting with basic assumptions and seeing where they lead. In the process, students will develop skills in observing syntactic patterns and analyzing these patterns in order to come to some generalizations on their own.

(Offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2025)

LING H114  INTRODUCTION TO SEMANTICS  (1.0 Credit)

Amanda Payne

Division: Humanities; Symbolic Reasoning
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course focuses on the study of meaning in human language. We will explore semantic issues that arise from the lexicon, the sentences, and the discourse. Along the way, we will investigate not only the semantic structure of natural language but also pragmatic factors that affect language use. This is a participation-intensive course. In the process, students will not only learn the basic semantic theory but will also develop skills in observing semantic patterns and analyzing these patterns in order to come to some generalizations on their own. Prerequisite(s): Any previous linguistics class or instructor permission.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

LING H115  PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY  (1.0 Credit)

Noah Elkins

Division: Humanities; Symbolic Reasoning
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course investigates the sound patterns found in human languages. Phonetics is the study of these patterns from a physical and perceptual perspective while phonology is the study of sound patterns from a cognitive perspective. Activities in the class will expose students to the methodologies used by both perspectives (articulatory description and acoustic analysis for phonetics and formal theoretical models for phonology) and show the necessity and utility of both approaches in understanding the nature of sound patterns in human language.

(Offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2025)

LING H200  MULTILINGUALISM AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION  (1.0 Credit)

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

At least 60% of the world speaks more than one language, while this is true of only around 20% of Americans. Misconceptions about multilingualism and language learning are common in American society, and these can lead to bias and discrimination. This seminar-style course uses a mix of discussion, lecture, and interactive activities to examine these topics from a variety of socio-cognitive angles, including language learning, language processing, dialectal variation, language and identity, and language policy. Pre-requisite(s): none Lottery Preference: (1) Ling and Ling/Lang majors, (2) Ling and Ling/Lang minors, (2) sophomores, (3) first years and juniors, (4) seniors

LING H204  TOPICS IN INTRODUCTORY PROGRAMMING: LANGUAGE AND COMPUTATION  (1.0 Credit)

Jane Chandlee, Suzanne Lindell

Division: Natural Science; Quantitative; Symbolic Reasoning
Domain(s): C: Physical and Natural Processes

A general introduction to computer programming, in the context of its application to a specific discipline such as Data Analysis or Bioinformatics. Prerequisite for CMSC 107, along with discipline-specific analysis. Not for students who have completed CMSC 105 and/or 107. This course is equivalent to CMSC 104. Prerequisite(s): LING H101, H113, or H115

LING H208  SPEECH SYNTHESIS AND RECOGNITION  (1.0 Credit)

Jane Chandlee

Division: Natural Science; Symbolic Reasoning
Domain(s): C: Physical and Natural Processes

An introduction to the methodologies used in the automated recognition and synthesis of human speech, focusing on Hidden Markov Models in recognition and unit selection in synthesis. Students will get hands-on experience with implementing the various components of these systems to better understand the techniques, challenges, and open areas of research. Crosslisted: Computer Science, Linguistics Prerequisite(s): LING 204, CS105 and 106 OR CS107 OR BMC 110 and 206 OR instructor consent

LING H214  SPANISH IN THE US: LANGUAGE, IDENTITY AND POLITICS  (1.0 Credit)

Ana López-Sánchez

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

The course introduces students to basic concepts of (critical) sociolinguistics with a focus on Spanish in the US. It examines the history and politics of Spanish in the US, the relationship of language to Latinx identities, and how language ideologies and policies reflect and shape societal views of Spanish and its speakers (and contribute to discrimination and social injustices). Course taught in Spanish. Prerequisite(s): Course at the 200-level in Spanish or Linguistics

LING H215  THE STRUCTURE OF COLONIAL VALLEY ZAPOTEC  (1.0 Credit)

Brook Lillehaugen

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

A detailed examination of the grammar of Colonial Valley Zapotec, an indigenous language of Oaxaca, Mexico. Focus on hands-on research, morphological analysis, and translation of archival documents. Prerequisite(s): LING 113; and one of the following: LING 101, 114, 115, or instructor consent

(Offered: Fall 2024)

LING H216  THE STRUCTURE OF MAM  (1.0 Credit)

Noah Elkins

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

Mam is a Mamean-branch Mayan language spoken predominantly in Guatemala, although smaller communities exist in Mexico and the United States. In this course, we examine Mam in depth, covering topics from phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, dialectal variation, and sociolinguistics. This course will afford students the opportunity to study a non-Indo-European language systematically while contributing to research on this underdocumented language. Pre-requisite(s): (LING H113 OR LING B113 OR LING S050) AND (LING 101 OR LING 114 OR LING 115 OR instructor permission)

(Offered: Spring 2025)

LING H228  FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION  (1.0 Credit)

Jane Chandlee

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

A seminar course on how humans acquire native language(s). The class surveys acquisition theories and the experimental methodologies that test them. Topics include a range of linguistic areas (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics), and contexts (monolingual, multilingual, and atypical development). Crosslisted: Linguistics, Psychology Prerequisite(s): Any one of the following: LING 101, 113, 114, 115, or Swarthmore equivalent.

LING H260  LINGUISTS AS PARTNERS IN LANGUAGE WORK  (0.5 Credit)

Brook Lillehaugen

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course prepares students for doing language work with community partners, e.g. through a summer internship. Students will consider ethical and cultural questions that might arise in the context of language work. Students will review technical skills they might need to be good partners in language work, such as elicitation and data workflow. This half unit course will be held once a week, starts in the second half of Spring semester. Pre-requisite(s): instructor permission

LING H281  SEMANTICS II  (1.0 Credit)

Amanda Payne

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

This course familiarizes students with original research in semantics. We review the basics of formal pragmatics, compositional semantics, lambda calculus, and event semantics. Then we read and discuss a selection of research articles, culminating in a final research project. Prerequisite(s): LING 114

LING H282  STRUCTURE OF CHINESE  (1.0 Credit)

Shizhe Huang

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This course is designed to acquaint students with both the syntactic and semantic structures of Mandarin Chinese and the theoretical implications they pose to the study of natural language. Students will have an opportunity to further their understanding of linguistic theories and to develop skills in analyzing a non-Indo-European language systematically.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

LING H295  SEMINAR IN SYNTAX  (1.0 Credit)

Amanda Payne

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

A course designed to both provide theoretical and empirical breadth in advanced topics not covered in the introductory syntax courses, as well as introduce students to new ideas and recent developments in the field. Topics vary from semester to semester. Prerequisite(s): LING H113 or LING S050

LING H299  ADVANCED RESEARCH METHODS  (1.0 Credit)

Amanda Payne

Division: Social Science
Domain(s): B: Analysis of the Social World

Students will explore the methods and tools used in research in many linguistics subfields, such as theoretical, corpus, experimental, and sociolinguistics. We will study examples of previous senior theses as well as published articles, identifying their research questions, contributions, and argument structure. Students will also work on a topic of their own choosing, compiling and synthesizing literature and culminating in a research proposal that could serve as the starting point for their senior thesis. Pre-requisite(s): Any TWO of the following, or instructor permission: LING101 (S001) Introduction to Linguistics, LING125 (S025) Sociolinguistics, LING113 (S050) Syntax, LING114 (S040) Semantics, LING115 (S045) Phonetics and Phonology Lottery Preference: 1) Senior majors, 2) Junior Majors, 3) Minors, 4) Everyone else

(Offered: Fall 2024)

LING H399  SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR  (1.0 Credit)

Shizhe Huang

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts); B: Analysis of the Social World

This seminar exposes students to linguistic research methods and guides them through the conceptualization of a topic, the research, and the writing of a senior thesis. All linguistics majors must write their senior thesis in this seminar or Ling S100 or S195. Enrollment limited to 15 students, Senior linguistics majors only.

(Offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2025)

Courses at Bryn Mawr

LING B101  INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS  (1.0 Credit)

Amanda Payne

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

An introductory survey of linguistics as a field. This course examines the core areas of linguistic structure (morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics), pragmatics, and language variation in relation to language change. The course provides rudimentary training in the analysis of language data, and focuses on the variety of human language structures and on the question of universal properties of language.

LING B105  LANGUAGE AND PLACE  (1.0 Credit)

Brook Lillehaugen

This project-based course focuses on hands-on research in a small group setting in order to collaboratively come to understand the relationship between a place and the languages of that place. In Spring 2022 the course will be part of a 360 and will focus on Nicaragua. Through seeking to understand the languages of Nicaragua, their histories and social dynamics, students will also learn basics of linguistics, especially historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. Spanish language a plus, though not required.

LING B113  INTRODUCTION TO SYNTAX  (1.0 Credit)

Amanda Payne

Division: Humanities

Introduces the investigation of sentence structures in human language, emphasizing insights from linguists over the past 40 years. The class will develop increasingly complex theory starting with basic assumptions and seeing where they lead. Students will gain a clearer understanding of grammar, develop and refine skills of analysis, writing, and argumentation. We will focus on English, occasionally using other languages to look at ways human languages are similar and how they differ.

LING B114  INTRODUCTION TO SEMANTICS  (1.0 Credit)

Amanda Payne

This course is designed to introduce you to the formal study of meaning in language: semantics. We will discuss elements of word meaning, formal logic, generative semantics, and pragmatics, slowly building our theory as we incorporate new linguistic phenomena from multiple human languages. No linguistic or logic background is assumed, but we will be using tools from set theory, model theory, and syntax in order to construct semantic analyses.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

LING B281  SEMANTICS II  (1.0 Credit)

Amanda Payne

This course is intended to familiarize you with original research in semantics. We will spend the first few weeks reviewing (or learning) the basic terms and tools of formal pragmatics and compositional semantics, including lambda calculus and event semantics. From there, we will read and discuss a selection of research articles in semantics and pragmatics, culminating in a final project for each student that investigates their own original research question related to meaning in language.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

LING B399  SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR  (1.0 Credit)

Amanda Payne

This seminar exposes students to linguistic research methods and guides them through the conceptualization of a topic, the research, and the writing of a senior thesis. All linguistics majors must write their senior thesis in this seminar or Ling S100 or S195.

Courses at Swarthmore

Visit the Tri-College Course Guide to view the list of courses at Swarthmore this year: https://trico.haverford.edu