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102. First Year Seminar (Humanities).
Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing,
may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of
instructor. (3). (HU).
Section 001 - Languages of Europe.
This seminar will introduce participants to the major national languages
of Europe, including most of those taught here at the University of Michigan.
(We will also look at some regional languages, such as Basque and Gaelic.)
Through oral presentations, discussion, and readings about particular languages
students will come to know something about human language in general: In
what ways do languages differ and in what ways are they the same? How do
languages develop through time? What is linguistic identity and how does
it inform history, politics, and the structure of society? Through a series
of written assignments students will also gain an understanding of the fundamental
techniques of linguistic analysis. (Hook)
Section 002 - Humor and Seriousness. This seminar will analyze humor and joking, and contrast them with "serious" speech. In the first few weeks, students will develop a theory of joking and seriousness based on direct observation and intuition, and in the rest of the course these ideas will be applied to various contexts. Three focal applications will be to stand-up comedy, Shakespeare's humor, departmental colloquia and brown-bag talks on campus. Individual students may do further projects on humor and seriousness in advertising, politics, film, written parody, or other genres. Students must be 18 by the end of September to attend club shows. Students must also have flexible afternoon schedules to allow attendance at colloquia, and be available Friday evenings for periodic film screenings and comedy performances. (Heath)
Section 003 - Deciphering Ancient
Languages. The written remains of ancient cultures - if we can read
them - can tell us a great deal about how the human world got the way it
is. This course examines how linguistics can help in deciphering ancient
languages. We will study a number of ancient scripts, including some already
deciphered (Mesopotamian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Linear B
script of Mycenean Greece), some now being deciphered (Mayan hieroglyphs),
and some which still await decipherment (e.g., Linear A of Crete,
the Mohenjo-Daro script of ancient India). Assignments will include background
readings, exercises with actual texts, short papers and reports to the class,
a midterm, and a final exam. (Baxter)
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103. First Year Seminar (Social Science).
Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing,
may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of
instructor. (3). (SS).
Section 001 - Language and Gender. Over the past two decades, scholars
have become aware of the role gender plays in how we interact with language.
This course aims to understand how the social lives of women and men interact
with the ways languages are structured and learned, how people talk to each
other in face-to-face interaction, and what and how we read and write. We'll
consider a wide range of materials including audio and video recordings,
diaries, romance novels, detective stories, and film as well as scholarly
material; we'll examine different methodologies including ethnography and
experiments. (Keller-Cohen)
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210. Introduction to Linguistic Analysis.
(4). (SS).
Nothing is more distinctly human than our ability to use language. Because
of that, we expect that the study of language can provide insight into human
nature. This course is an analytic introduction to the methods linguists
use for describing languages (although general training in analytic thought
is our ultimate goal). Drawing on examples from a large number of the world's
languages, we will look at the sounds of language, how they are produced
and how they pattern into words; we will study the diverse ways in which
individual languages approach processes of word and sentence formation,
while we ask whether there are processes universal to all languages. By
focusing simultaneously on language data and on the techniques used by linguists
to make sense of these data, we will see that our understanding of the object
of inquiry (language) is influenced by our methods of inquiry. Requirements
include problem-solving assignments, quiz(zes), midterm and final exams;
no prerequisite except an interest in language and thinking. (Toon)
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211. Introduction to Language. (3).
(SS).
From time immemorial human beings have been curious about language - about
its structure, its diversity, its use, and its effects on others. In this
course, we will explore the human capacity for language; we will start with
a discussion of the ways language differs from animal communication, and
then review major aspects of language structure (sounds, words, sentences,
meaning). We will then cover child language acquisition, and the analysis
of American Sign Language as a real human language. We will also apply what
we do to discussions of current dialects of English and we will consider
social attitudes toward language. What is "Standard English" and
is it better than "dialects" of English? Course work includes
five homework assignments, one midterm exam, and a final exam. (Tortora
and Benki)
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212. Introduction to the Symbolic Analysis
of Language. (4). (MSA).
This course is an introduction to some basic mathematical concepts and techniques
used in the representation of linguistic meaning. Set theory, first-order
logic, and (elementary) model theory. The main focus of this course will
be learning how to construct rudimentary models of natural language with
these mathematical tools. We will investigate the extent to which these
models succeed in approximating natural language, and analyze some of their
better known failures (e.g., why do people often believe that `Every
cat sneezed' and `No cat sneezed' are contraries of each other? Why can't
our models account for this?). We will also attempt to systematize our understanding
of these problems, and discuss possible ways of overcoming (some of) them.
There will be weekly exercises, a midterm, and a final exam. No specific
prerequisites. (Cresti)
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