Courses offered in 2019-2020

Courses ending with suffix "A" or "Q" :Fall term 2019 (from September until December)

Courses ending with suffix "B": Winter term 2020 (from January until April)

Course ending with suffix "L": Summer term 2020 (from May until August)

FALL TERM 2019

LINGUIST*9500Q/**9501Q - GRADUATE RESEARCH SEMINAR - Dr. Ileana Paul
Start Date: September 12, 2019
Time & location: Thursdays 9:30am-11:00am room UC 2120
COURSE OUTLINE

 *LINGUIST9500Q: Course number reserved for 2nd year MA students only
**LINGUIST9501Q:Course Number reserved for 1st year MA students only

As part of your training in linguistics, you will develop valuable transferrable skills that can be effectively applied in a wide range of job settings. This course aims to help students identify and strengthen their marketable skills and learn to present themselves effectively to prospective employers both within and outside of academia. These skills include time management, oral communication, grant writing, teaching, leadership, research, project management, editing, interpersonal skills, and an appreciation of ethical and civic responsibility.

LINGUIST9600A/4248A- Principles of Syntax - Dr. Joyce Bruhn de Garavito
Start Date: September 11, 2019
Time and Location: Wednesdays, 9:30am-12:30pm room UC 2120
COURSE OUTLINE

How do you put words together to form sentences? How does the way we build our sentences contribute towards interpretation? Why are some sentences ambiguous? Does the concept of grammaticality exist in the mind, or is it a social construct? How does the structure of Spanish differ from other languages? This course aims at understanding ways in which these questions and others may be approached, and how they contribute to our understanding of the human mind. More than solving problems, we hope to learn to ‘think scientifically’ about language, that is, we will try to analyze sentences in different ways, making different hypotheses about them. Then we will try to weigh the evidence that supports each of these hypotheses.

LINGUIST9811A- Dialectology- Dr. David Heap
Start Date: September 10, 2019
Time and Location: Tuesdays, 9:30am-12:30pm room UC 2120
COURSE OUTLINE

This course offers students the opportunity to acquire a solid grasp of the fundamental theoretical concepts of dialectology as well as practical experience as developing scholars. Students are invited to deepen their knowledge in the field by carrying out a four-phase research project (annotated bibliography, abstract, in-class presentation, final paper) on a specific topic of particular interest to them chosen in consultation with the instructor (specific weightings of assignments will be discussed at the first class meeting). The course address areas such as the origins of dialectology and its relationship to other branches of linguistics, linguistic geography, dialectometry, urban dialectology (i.e. variationist sociolinguistics) and dialect topography. Materials and readings draw on a variety of languages and language families.

The language of instruction and required readings will be English but students have the option of submitting written work in English, French or Spanish. Students in French Studies graduate programs are required to submit all written work in French.

LINGUIST9819A/SPANISH9717A- Sociolinguistics of Spanish- Dr. Olga Tararova
Start Date: September 11, 2019
Time and Location: Wednesdays, 12:30pm-3:30pm room TBA
COURSE OUTLINE

This graduate seminar focuses on the study of linguistic variation across the Spanish speaking world. It covers the central issues in phonological, morphological, and syntactic variation, analyzed from a geographical as well as from a social point of view. Introduction to survey methods in sociolinguistics and techniques for critically assessing different issues concerning the effect(s) of gender, age, education, and class are provided so students will be able to develop a research paper, as part of the course requirement. The classes will be divided in two parts: 1) discussion of the weekly material, followed by 2) Goldvarb software use. Course taught in English.

Courses offered in other Departments:

To take a course outside the program, please contact Chrisanthi Ballas to request a form.

PSYCHOL9111A- Concepts and Categories- Dr. J. Paul  Minda
Start Date: September 11, 2019
Time and Location: Wednesdays, 1-4pm room WIRB 1160

The ability to learn and use categories is a characteristic of intelligent behaviour. Categories allow a person to generalize information to new situations or to previously unseen objects. Categories also allow for many variations of an item to be treated as the same thing. In this course, we will review theoretical accounts categorization. We will also review current models of classification and categorical decision making. In addition, we will spend some time getting into the mechanics of several computational models and we will use these models to create simulations of category learning scenarios.

WINTER 2020

LINGUIST9640B- Morphology - Dr. Ileana Paul
Start Date: January 7, 2020
Time and Location: Tuesdays, 9:30am-12:30pm room UC 2120
COURSE OUTLINE

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words, of the processes by which words are created, and of the relation of words and word-parts to meanings and to syntax. This course will survey some of the important phenomena which have been noted in the course of recent morphological research and the major approaches which have been proposed to deal with them. Where possible readings will be taken from the primary linguistic literature focussing on key articles and monographs.

LINGUIST9620/4247B - Empirical Issues in Phonology - Dr. David Heap
Start Date: January 8, 2020
Time and Location: Wednesdays, 9:30am-12:30pm room UC 2120

A range of readings are used to examine development of phonological theory over a number of decades, from the early generative linear approaches to more recent non-linear alternatives. The emphasis is on the dynamics which drive change from one model to another, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of different  approaches in accounting for linguistic facts. Students explore a range of datasets from various languages to illustrate phonological processes and cross-linguistic typological patterns.

LINGUIST9237B/SPANISH9713B: Field Methods -Dr. Olga Tararova
Start Date: TBA
Time and Location:  Thursdays 2:30-5:30pm, room TBA

This graduate seminar provides a thorough introduction to the principles and practice of linguistic fieldwork. A wide range of topics will be covered, from data collection techniques to the theoretically informed analysis of the collected data in two subfields of linguistics (phonetics and morphosyntax) The seminar is designed for students interested in incorporating linguistics data into research in theoretical linguistics. Course taught in English.

Courses offered in other Departments:

To take a course outside the program, please contact Chrisanthi Ballas to request a form.

 

ANTHRO9228B/4412B:- Language and Power -Dr. Tania Granadillo
Start Date: TBA
Time and Location:  Tuesday 1:30 – 4:30 pm, Social Science Centre (SSC) room  3227

The purpose  of  this  course  is  to  examine  linkages  between  linguistic  practices  and  relations  of power,    drawing    primarily    on    techniques    of    linguistic anthropology    and    discourse analysis. Following Philips (1999) we will assume that the power of language lies in its capacity for  creating  the  world  and  that  this  capacity  can  be  explored  in  three  different  but  integrated ways:  in  the  structure  of  language,  in  face-to-face  interaction  and  in  its  connection  to  macro socio-historical processes.

PSYCHOL9230B- Issues in Philosophy, Psychology and Neuroscience- Dr. Michael Atkinson & Dr. Stefan Kölher
Start Date: TBA
Time and Location: Mondays, 2:30-5:30pm room TBA

No course description

Summer TERM 2020

LINGUIST9453L/PHIL4210G: Survey of Philosophy of Language - Dr. Robert Stainton
Start Date: May 2020
Time and Location:TBA
COURSE OUTLINE

A survey of foundational and highly influential texts from 20th Century Analytic Philosophy of Language. Emphasis will be on twin topics of special interest to contemporary linguistic theorizing: 1) contrasting conceptions of linguistic meaning, including Frege-Russell-Davidson style truth-conditional approaches; Ordinary Language Philosophy’s use-oriented approaches; and the mentalist semantics familiar from Grice and generative grammar. 2) The contrast between semantics vs. pragmatics and attempts to trace a boundary between them. This latter section will conclude with a detailed case study on definite descriptions, indexicals and singular reference. Authors include: Austin, Davidson, Donnellan, Fodor, Frege, Grice, Kaplan, Kripke, Russell, Searle, Strawson and Wittgenstein.