Linguistics

College of Arts and Sciences
Bloomington

Departmental E-mail
lingdept@indiana.edu

Departmental URL
www.indiana.edu/~lingdept

Chairperson
Professor Stuart Davis

Graduate Faculty
Degrees Offered
Special Departmental Requirements
Master of Arts in Linguistics
Master of Arts in Linguistics with a Concentration in Computational Linguistics
Doctor of Philosophy Degree
Ph.D. in Linguistics with a Concentration in African Languages and Linguistics
Ph.D. Minors
Courses

Graduate Faculty

(An asterisk [*] denotes associate membership in University Graduate School faculty.)

Chancellor's Professor
Daniel Dinnsen

Distinguised Professor
Paul Newman

Professors
Stuart Davis, Steven Franks (Slavic Languages and Literatures), Robert Port (Cognitive Science), Albert Valdman (Emeritus, French and Italian)

Associate Professors
Julie Auger (French and Italian), Robert Botne, J. Clancy Clements (Spanish and Portuguese), Kenneth de Jong, Yoshihisa Kitagawa, Samuel G. Obeng, Barbara Vance (French and Italian)

Assistant Professor
Damir Cavar

Adjunct Professors
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig (TESOL/Applied Linguistics), Phil Connell (Speech and Hearing Sciences), Judith Gierut (Speech and Hearing Sciences), Harry L. Gradman (TESOL/Applied Linguistics), Beverly Hartford (TESOL/Applied Linguistics), Susan Herring (School of Library and Information Science), Lawrence Moss (Mathematics), David Pisoni (Psychology), Natsuko Tsujimura (East Asian Languages and Cultures)

Adjunct Associate Professors
Laurent Dekydtspotter* (French and Italian), George Fowler* (Slavic Languages and Literatures), Roxana M. Newman* (Affiliate Member), John Paolillo (School of Library and Information Science, Informatics), Rex Sprouse* (Germanic Studies)

Academic Advising
For Master of Arts in Linguistics and Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics: Professor Robert Botne, Memorial Hall 317, (812) 855-6456.

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Degrees Offered

Master of Arts in Linguistics, Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics

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Special Departmental Requirements

See also general University Graduate School requirements.

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Master of Arts in Linguistics

Admission Requirements
Admission to the M.A. program will be based on evaluations of (1) undergraduate grade record, (2) level of achievement in the Graduate Record Examination General Test, (3) three letters of recommendation, and (4) undergraduate exposure to linguistics and related course work. Students not satisfying requirement (4) may be admitted but may be required to do course work prerequisite to introductory graduate courses.

Thesis
Optional; maximum of 4 credit hours.

Final Examination
None.

Course Requirements
A total of 30 credit hours, including L520, L530, L541, L542, and L543. A grade point average of 3.0 (B) must be achieved in these four core courses. Additional electives as approved by the department. Specific course requirements may be met by taking a higher level course in the same area.

Foreign Language Requirements
Reading knowledge of one foreign language approved by the department and knowledge of the structure of a language or languages other than English and outside the student's general language family. (The L653-L654 sequence may satisfy the second part of this requirement.)

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Master of Arts in Linguistics with a Concentration in Computational Linguistics

Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field which addresses the use of computers to process or produce human language. Linguistics contributes to this field an understanding of the special properties of language data, and also provides theories and descriptions of language structure and use. Computational linguistics is largely an applied discipline concerned with practical problems. Typical applications include: natural language processing, machine translation (translating from one language to another), speech synthesis, speech production, information retrieval (finding relevant documents or parts of documents in large collections of texts), cognitive modeling, and, in general, almost anything dealing with natural language interfaces.

Course Requirements
The master's track in computational linguistics consists of a minimum of 30 credit hours to include L541, L542, L543, L545, L645, and B651 (offered by the Department of Computer Science). A grade point average of 3.0 (B) must be achieved in these seven core courses. Four additional electives must be taken. A minimum of 20 credit hours must be from linguistics department offerings. Outside electives must be approved by the student's academic advisor.

Foreign Language Requirement
Reading knowledge of one foreign language approved by the department.

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Doctor of Philosophy Degree

Admission Requirements
Admission to the Ph.D. program will be based upon evaluation of (1) previous academic record, (2) level of achievement on the Graduate Record Examination General Test, (3) three letters of recommendation, (4) previous exposure to linguistics and related course work, and (5) compatibility of interests with those of the faculty.

Fields of Study
The doctorate is normally pursued in areas such as phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, African linguistics, computational linguistics, applied linguistics (including second-language acquisition), and sociolinguistics. Other concentrations, including a combined degree with cognitive science, are also possible with the approval of the department.

Course Requirements
A minimum of 90 credit hours, including dissertation. Specific requirements include one graduate course each in phonetics, phonology, syntax, historical linguistics, and language acquisition, plus at least four courses in linguistics at the 600-700 levels, one of which must be L642 or L643 for students in general linguistics. Only one of these four courses may be taken outside the Department of Linguistics. L653, the first half of the field methods sequence, may not be counted if it is used in partial fulfillment of the language structure requirement. Additional course requirements may be set by the student's advisory committee.

Minor
The choice of a minor field should be agreed to by the student's advisory committee. The specific requirements for the minor are established by the department that grants the minor. The student is responsible for ascertaining what those requirements are and for meeting them.

Advisory Committee
All students in the Ph.D. program will select an advisory committee consisting of at least three faculty members, one of whom should normally represent the student's minor field. The committee must be selected no later than the end of the semester following the completion of the master's degree at Indiana University, or, in the case of students entering the program with master's degrees from other institutions, no later than two semesters after matriculation.

Students will plan their programs with the advisory committee, which will be responsible for counseling students with regard to the qualifying examination, setting the examination, and administering it.

Foreign Language Requirements
Three languages: (1) reading or speaking knowledge of two foreign languages relevant and applicable to doctoral study in a particular field of linguistics and (2) knowledge of the structure of a language or languages other than English and outside the student's general language family (choice to be determined in consultation with the student's advisory committee).

Qualifying Examination
Comprehensive; the examination is on two distinct areas of linguistics and typically requires the student to write two papers (of publishable quality). Specific focus and scheduling of the examination is determined by the student's advisory committee.

Research Proposal
After nomination to candidacy, the student will select a research committee composed of no fewer than three members of the Department of Linguistics faculty and an outside representative. This committee must approve the proposed dissertation topic.

Final Examination
Oral defense of dissertation. This defense is open.

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Ph.D. in Linguistics with a Concentration in African Languages and Linguistics

Course Requirements
A minimum of 90 credit hours, including dissertation. Specific requirements include A501, L653-L654, one graduate-level course each in phonetics, phonology, syntax, and historical linguistics, plus at least two additional courses in linguistics at the 600-700 levels. Where appropriate, additional courses may be assigned by the student's advisory committee.

Foreign Language Requirements
Three languages: (1) proficiency in two foreign languages, one of which must be an African language and the other normally French or German; and (2) knowledge of the structure of a foreign language or language group other than Romance or Germanic.

(All other requirements are the same as the above for the Ph.D. in Linguistics.)

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Ph.D. Minors

Ph.D. Minor in Linguistics
Doctoral students in other departments may choose linguistics as an outside minor. Twelve (12) credit hours of linguistics or related courses are required for the minor. A grade point average of 3.0 (B) or higher must be achieved in these courses. The specific program for satisfying this requirement should be developed in consultation with the linguistics outside minor advisor.

Ph.D. Minor in African Languages and Linguistics
The minor consists of a minimum of four courses (12 credits) including the following: (1) one course in an African language at the 200 level or higher, (2) A501, and (3) two additional courses in African languages or linguistics approved by the student's minor advisor. A grade point average of 3.0 (B) or better must be achieved in these courses.

Ph.D. Minor in Applied Linguistics
The minor consists of a minimum of 12 credit hours of TESOL and applied linguistics or related courses. A grade point average of 3.0 (B) or higher must be achieved in these courses. The specific program for satisfying this requirement must be developed in consultation with the student's minor advisor.

Ph.D. Minor in Computational Linguistics
The minor consists of a minimum of 12 credit hours of course work, including the following: (1) L545 and L645, (2) Computer Science B651 Natural Language Processing or equivalent, and (3) one elective relevant to computational linguistics and approved by the minor advisor. A grade point average of 3.0 (B) or higher must be achieved in these courses. A grade point average of 3.0 (B) or higher must be achieved in these courses.

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Courses

General
The Linguistic Study of African Languages
African and Other Languages

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General

L503 Survey of Linguistics I (3 cr.) An introduction to the field of linguistics. Credit not given towards the M.A. in general linguistics or the Ph.D. in linguistics.

L520 Sociolinguistics (3 cr.) Examination of theoretical perspectives on language as a social phenomenon. Questions of linguistic variation, including social and contextual factors contributing to variation.

L530 Introduction to Historical Linguistics (3 cr.) P: L542 or equivalent. Principles of language classification and subclassification. Processes of diachronic change. Methods of linguistic reconstruction, especially the comparative method and internal reconstruction.

L541 Introductory Phonetics (4 cr.) Survey of speech sound types in languages of the world with practice in discrimination, transcription, and production. Introduction to acoustic phonetics, physiology of speech production, and speech perception; with concurrent laboratory section.

L542 Phonological Analysis (3 cr.) An introduction to the principles of contemporary phonological theory and tools of phonological analysis and description. The format of the course is oriented toward data-based problems from a wide variety of languages.

L543 Syntactic Analysis (3 cr.) An examination of the methods and argumentation used in syntactic analysis conducted within the framework of generative grammar. Emphasis on constructing and evaluating grammatical analyses and promoting critical understanding of the generative framework.

L544 Morphological Analysis (3 cr.) Introduction to the basic concepts and approaches to morphological analysis and description to different theories of word structure and to issues in the relation between morphology and phonology and between morphology and syntax. Data-based problem solving from a wide variety of languages.

L545 Computation and Linguistic Analysis (3 cr.) This course explores how linguistic analyses can be stated as computer programs, emphasizing the design of data structures used in linguistic analyses, the computational issues underlying them, and their use in natural language processing.

L546 Semantics (3 cr.) P: L543 or equivalent. Introduction to current semantic theory, its tools, concepts, and principles. Emphasis on constructing detailed fragments of natural language with syntactic and semantic components.

L590 Linguistic Structure (3 cr.) Analysis of particular aspects of the structure of a language or of a group of closely related languages. Methods used may include text analysis, informant work, study of secondary sources, lectures, reports.

L611 Models of Linguistic Structure (3 cr.) Formulations of linguistic structures--finite--set, phrase-structure, transformational dependency, predictive-with emphasis on their mathematical properties. Mathematical concepts underlying these formulations, such as sets, relations, Markov processes, and automata.

L614 Alternative Syntactic Theories (3 cr.) P: L543 or equivalent. An examination of a current syntactic framework other than the standard framework in terms of specific issues of syntactic analysis and general claims about the nature and organization of the syntax of natural languages. Emphasis on developing analyses within that framework. May be repeated for credit when topic varies.

L620 Advanced Sociolinguistics (3 cr.) Sociolinguistic methodology and data analysis, language ideology, and language in social institutions. Course topics include: quantitative and qualitative methods (variationist, ethnographic, and discourse analytic methods); Anglo-American, Continental pragmatics; language and sociocultural identity (culture, politeness, power, solidarity, and gender); and institutional discourse (juridical, therapeutic, political, religious, etc.).

L625 Bilingualism and Language Contact (3 cr.) Problems of multilingualism, including diglossia. Examination of selected cases illustrating the relationship between language contact and linguistic change.

L630 Lexicology (3 cr.) Analysis of the lexical structure of languages. The word and its morphological and semantic properties. Application of lexicology to practical problems in dictionary making (lexicography).

L636 Pidgins and Creoles (3 cr.) Survey of the field of pidgin and creole linguistics: presentation of the structure of selected prototypical pidgins and creoles; review of the theories for the genesis of creoles and their relationship to current issues in language acquisition and historical linguistics; discussion of language planning issues specific to pidgins and creoles, as well as discussion of current issues.

L641 Advanced Phonetics (3 cr.) P: L541 or equivalent. Experimental analysis of the speech signal; speech articulation and the structure of phonetic space. A survey of current theories of speech production and perception with experience designing and conducting experiments, and some consideration of phonetic factors that determine the choice of particular sound contrasts in languages.

L642 Advanced Phonological Description (3 cr.) P: L542 or equivalent. Problems of phonological description and their theoretical implications. Practice in formulating and evaluating explanatory statements about various phonetic, phonotactic, and morphophonemic properties of languages.

L643 Advanced Syntax (3 cr.) P: L543 or equivalent. Syntactic analysis and recent developments of principles and parameters/minimalist theory. Taking up from L543, reviews core modules of grammar from L543 and examines topics such as logical form, empty categories, barriers, functional categories, and relativized minimality. Introduces concepts of minimalist theory. Training in abstract and squib writing, paper presentation.

L645 Advanced Natural Language Processing (3 cr.) This course explores the needs of working natural language processing systems with attention to statistical and corpus linguistic methods in natural language processing, and their uses in data mining, information retrieval, lexicography, and other practical domains.

L653-L654 Field Methods in Linguistics I-II (3-3 cr.) Techniques of data collection and analysis based on work with a native speaker of a language unknown to the students.

L670 Language Typologies (3 cr.) Historical review of typologies. Specific languages controlled by students will be typologized in different ways.

L690 Advanced Readings in Linguistics (1-4 cr.) S/F Grading.

L695 M.A. Thesis Research (1-4 cr.)*

L700 Seminar on Current Issues (1-4 cr.) This seminar will deal with major books and articles that have defined important areas of debate in the current development of linguistic theory. The specific title will be announced well in advance of each semester. Course may be retaken for up to 12 credit hours.

L710 Seminar in Phonetics (3 cr.) Selected problems in the acoustic, motor, and auditory structure of the sounds of human language. May be repeated for credit when topic changes.

L712 Seminar in Phonology (3 cr.) Research and reports on selected problems of generative phonology. May be repeated for credit when topic changes.

L714 Seminar in Syntax (3 cr.) Advanced treatment of a topic, construction, or theoretical concept in syntax using a current theoretical model. May be repeated for credit when topic changes.

L720 Seminar in Sociolinguistics (3 cr.) Selected problems concerning the relationship between language and society. May be repeated for credit when topic changes.

L760 Seminar in Historical Linguistics (3 cr.) Selected problems concerning linguistic reconstruction, processes of diachronic change, and language classification. May be repeated for credit when topic changes.

L780 Seminar in Semantics (3 cr.) Selected problems in the area of meaning and the relationship between language and semantic interpretation. May be repeated for credit when topic changes.

L800 Research (cr. arr.)*

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The Linguistic Study of African Languages

A501 Introduction to African Linguistics (3 cr.) Introduction to the linguistic study of African languages; questions of language distribution, typological and genetic classification, comparative reconstruction, and structural aspects of individual languages.

A502 Language in Africa (3 cr.) Language in the lives and behavior of African people. Dynamics of language spread and multilingualism. Literacy, language, and education. Linguistic ritual: greetings, condolences, apologies, leavetakings. Joking and insulting relationships. Stories and storytellers. Proverbs and their use. Power of language in society.

A503 Bantu Linguistics (3 cr.) Structural comparisons of Bantu languages at levels of phonology, morphology, and syntax, noting differences and similarities of various East African languages.

A504 Chadic Linguistics (3 cr.) R: reading knowledge of French or German. An introduction to the Chadic language family. The relationship of Chadic to Afro-Asiatic and the membership and internal classification of the Chadic family. Common structural features of present-day Chadic languages and the reconstruction of Proto-Chadic.

A747 Seminar in African Linguistics (4 cr.) Research on specific problems of African linguistics. Course may be repeated for credit.

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African and Other Languages

A400 Advanced Individual Study of an African Language (1-4 cr.; 12 cr. max.) May be repeated for credit.

L506 Tutorial Instruction in Foreign Languages (cr. arr.) May be repeated for credit.

Haitian Creole
C501-C502 Haitian Creole I-II (3-3 cr.)

Hausa
H101-H102 Elementary Hausa I-II (3-3 cr.)1
H201-H202 Intermediate Hausa I-II (3-3 cr.)
H301-H302 Advanced Hausa I-II (3-3 cr.)

Swahili
S101-S102 Elementary Swahili I-II (3-3 cr.)1
S201-S202 Intermediate Swahili I-II (3-3 cr.)
S301-S302 Advanced Swahili I-II (3-3 cr.)

Other African Languages
F101-F102 Elementary African Languages I-II: [variable language] (3-3 cr.)1
F201-F202 Intermediate African Languages I-II: [variable language] (3-3 cr.)
F301-F302 Advanced African Languages I-II: [variable language] (3-3 cr.)

Consult the department for courses in other areas acceptable for degree requirements.

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1 Three (3) hours credit for graduate students; 4 hours credit for undergraduates.