First-Year Courses in Linguistics (Division 423) This page was created at 8:00 AM on Wed, Oct 4, 2000. Fall Term, 2000 (September 6 - December 22) Open courses in Linguistics Wolverine Access Subject listing for LING Take me to the Fall Term '00 Time Schedule for Linguistics. To see what first-year courses have been added or changed in Linguistics this week go to What's New This Week. Ling. 211. Introduction to Language. Section 001. Instructor(s): Samuel Epstein , Sarah Thomason (thomason@umich.edu) Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (SS). Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted. From time immemorial human beings have been curious about what appears to be a uniquely human possession, human language – about its structure, its diversity, its use, and its effects on others. This course explores the human capacity for language; we begin with a discussion of the ways in which human language differs from animal communication, and then review major aspects of language structure common to all human languages: sound systems, words and their meanings, sentence structures and meaning. We will then examine child language development, sentence processing, and language change; finally, we will extend our results to discussions of language variation, including social and political attitudes toward language (for instance, what is “Standard English”, and is it better than other dialects of English? And should English become the official national language of the United States?). Course requirements include regular homework assignments, one midterm exam, and a final exam. Check Times, Location, and Availability Cost: No Data Given. Waitlist Code: No Data Given. Ling. 212. Introduction to the Symbolic Analysis of Language. Section 001. Instructor(s): Stefan Frisch (sfrisch@umich.edu) Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (MSA). Credits: (4; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sfrisch/L212_F00.html This course is an introduction to some basic mathematical concepts and techniques used in the representation of language in linguistic theory. The main focus of this course will be learning how to construct rudimentary models of natural language with these mathematical tools. In addition, students will learn the essential techniques for describing and analyzing linguistic data through working on examples taken from various languages of the world. We will investigate the extent to which these models succeed in approximating natural language, and analyze some of their better known failures with an eye toward current linguistic theory. There will be weekly exercises, a midterm and a final exam. No specific prerequisites. Check Times, Location, and Availability Cost: No Data Given. Waitlist Code: No Data Given. This page was created at 8:00 AM on Wed, Oct 4, 2000. University of Michigan | College of LS&A | Student Academic Affairs | LS&A Bulletin Index This page maintained by LS&A Academic Information and Publications, 1228 Angell Hall Copyright © 2000 The Regents of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA +1 734 764-1817 Trademarks of the University of Michigan may not be electronically or otherwise altered or separated from this document or used for any non-University purpose.