Minor in Linguistics

An introduction to the major features of languages and to the structure, use, and variation in the sign languages and sign systems commonly used in the United States. The course will cover four major topics: (1) Language: The nature and definition of languages, the uniqueness of language, and contrasts between language and other forms of communication; (2) Language and Culture: The role of language in human society, with special focus on language acquisition, language identity, and bilingualism; (3) American Sign Language Structure: A survey of the major features of the linguistic structure of ASL. Topics are: Phonology: the structure of the physical signals; Morphology: the basic structure and composition of meaningful units of ASL; Syntax: word order and nonmanual syntactic signals in ASL sentences; (4) Language Variation: Language variation and language contact in the deaf community, including discussions of contact varieties of signing and systems for representing English.

This course provides an introductory overview of the major linguistic structures of American Sign Language. Major topics are: phonology, morphology, syntax, language use, and linguistic applications. Some comparisons with English and other spoken and signed languages will be examined.

This course provides a broad introduction to the principles of the linguistic structure and analysis of the phonetics, phonology, and morphology of ASL, English and other languages, with a focus on the analysis and solution of linguistic problems. The course will cover a number of topics in phonology, such as phonological contrast, phonotactics, phonological processes, and several topics in morphology, such as inflection, derivation and lexicalization.

This course introduces students to theories and methods of two areas of study in linguistics: Syntax and Discourse. Syntax is concerned with the sentence as the unit of language, combining descriptions of events with communicative intentions, and grounding this into the reality of the here and now. The study of language in text and context is known in Linguistics as ''discourse analysis.'' This course provides an introduction to approaches to discourse analysis as well as tools used in the analysis of discourse.

This course will cover the different research traditions in linguistics, as well as the methodological issues involved in doing linguistic research. Students will learn how to access and summarize scholarly publications and how research findings are disseminated. Students will also learn about the ethical conduct of research. Students will work as a research assistant with a faculty member, applying what they learn throughout the semester. Students will periodically report on what they learn about research and about their work on the specific project.

Deaf and hearing people around the world acquire, produce and perceive sign languages. This course takes an in-depth look at how they acquire, produce and perceive sign languages. Psycholinguistics generally covers three domains: acquisition, use (perception and production) and brain studies. This course focuses on perception and production, as well as brain studies (aka neurolinguistics). With respect to production, we will examine studies that focus on ''slips of the hands'', both spontaneous and induced. With respect to perception, we will look at both online and offline cases. For brain studies, we will discuss both behavioral and imaging studies.

This course applies cognitive linguistic notions to a variety of issues in translation and other language contact domains within signed language communities. Cognitive linguistics posits an understanding of language as being usage based with meaning grounded in human experience and with linguistic units at multiple levels all contributing to meaning. This course will explore the implications that these and other cognitive linguistic concepts carry with them for how we understand meaning, how we interact with each other through language, and how both form and meaning are influenced when languages and language communities are in contact.

Different types of depiction in signed languages include role shifting, classifier constructions, and other iconic “uses of signing space.” Depiction is also performed by non-signers, and in this context is generally considered to be a form of gesture. This course introduces students to central notions in gesture studies and multimodal language research and a framework with which to identify and describe basic depiction types in language use. Throughout the semester students perform exercises in analyzing depiction observed in ASL.

Sociolinguistics is the discipline that studies the interaction of language and social life. This course will examine the major areas of sociolinguistics, including multilingualism, language contact, variation, language policy and planning and language attitudes. Methodological issues pertaining to the collection of sociolinguistic data will also be examined. The application of sociolinguistics to education, the law, medicine and sign language interpretation will be covered. All issues will be considered as they pertain to both spoken and signed languages.

This seminar format course offers a broad introduction to the study of the various ways linguists apply their work through engagement with communities outside of academics. We will consider what makes linguistic work ''applied'': where applied linguistic research questions come from, who participates in applied linguistics, how we use and share our research knowledge, and what kinds of engagement with wider communities are possible. The goal of the course is to better understand how we can apply our own linguistic knowledge and approaches in order to engage ever more deeply with deaf communities.

This course will provide students with experience in gathering and analyzing data from a sign language other than ASL. The particular language selected will vary from year to year, with preference given to under-investigated sign languages. Students will study the lexicon, phonology, morphology, and syntax of this language; each student will focus on one topic for an in-depth research project.

This seminar will explore language documentation with an emphasis on practices related to the documentation of signed languages. We will first examine different ways language documentation (sometimes called ¿documentary linguistics¿) has been conceptualized by researchers. We will then look at work that has been done in signed languages(including field work and signed language corpora) along with examining theoretical concepts and specific case studies in the literature. We will also examine signed language data sets available to researchers online.

A corpus is a large collection of machine-readable texts, and corpus linguists use computers to analyze the contents of a corpus. This methods course introduces the discipline of corpus linguistics and the typical tools that are used when working with corpora. We will also take a hands-on approach to the development of sign language corpora, using a dataset of Gallaudet ASL videos. Students will consider design choices and annotation guidelines as they pertain to building a corpus.

Special topics courses address subject matter or content not already included in the existing curriculum. Offered on a temporary basis, special topics may evaluate the demand for a new course or area of study or may cover areas of specific interest.