Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• CAS LX 660: Historical and Comparative Linguistics
  Introduction to language change and the methodology of historical linguistic analysis, using data from a wide array of languages. Investigates genetic relatedness among languages, language comparison, historical reconstruction, and patterns and principles of change in phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Carries humanities divisional studies credit in CAS. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS LX 535. Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness, Creativity/Innovation.
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  • Creativity/Innovation
  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Historical Consciousness
• CAS LX 665: Variation in Dialects of English
  Graduate Corequisites: (GRSLX666) - Exploration of how dialects of English differ from each other, focusing on grammatical variation in the US, with occasional forays into other dialects. Students come to appreciate how linguists investigate grammatical diversity scientifically, revealing the complex structure of non-standard dialects. Students must also register for GRS LX 666.
• CAS LX 667: Indigenous Languages of Latin America
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASLX250) and First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g. CAS WR 100; WR 120) - Graduate Corequisites: (GRSLX677) - Exploration of the structure, history, and varieties of indigenous languages of Latin America, and of the communities that speak them. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Research and Information Literacy. Students must also register for GRS LX 677.
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  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS LX 668: Structure of African Languages
  African language structure and status from the perspectives of theoretical and comparative linguistics (within the generative grammar framework), typology, and sociolinguistics, with focus on South African Nguni languages, especially IsiXhosa, and comparisons to its sister languages in that language group. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS LX 505.
• CAS LX 670: Romance Linguistics
  Graduate Prerequisites: prior study of some Romance language at the 4th semester level or higher (e.g. CASLF 212 or LI 212 or LP 212 or LS 212 or CL 212, or equivalent); or consent of instructor. Corequisite: CASLX 671 - Covers morphophonological and morphosyntactic change since Latin, plus various topics in the comparative grammar of modern Romance languages. Students deepen their linguistic knowledge and analytic skills by applying what they have learned in other linguistics courses to this language family.
• CAS LX 673: The Structure of French: Phonology
  Graduate Prerequisites: one CAS LF 300-level course, or consent of instructor. - The sound system of standard French and dialect variation in France, Canada, and other Francophone regions. Questions about mental representation of linguistic information, processes of word formation, and language variation and change. Students discover linguistic regularities through frequent problem sets. Conducted in French. Also offered as CAS LF 503.
• CAS LX 674: The Structure of French: Syntax
  Graduate Prerequisites: one CAS LF 300-level course, or consent of instructor. - Exploration of French syntax with comparisons to Quebecois, English, and other languages. Topics include the position of the verb, pronoun status, questions, relative clauses, imperatives, negation, causatives, and left/right dislocation. Students discover structural properties through frequent problem sets. Conducted in French. Also offered as CAS LF 502.
• CAS LX 676: Topics in French Linguistics
  Graduate Prerequisites: one CAS LF 300-level course or consent of instructor. - Topics vary by semester. Taught in French. May be repeated for credit as topics change. Also offered as CAS LF 506. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS LX 506.
• CAS LX 677: Indigenous Languages of Latin America Discussion
  Graduate Corequisites: (GRSLX667) - Required discussion section for students registered in GRS LX 667. Students must also register for GRS LX 667.
• CAS LX 681: Spanish in the United States
  Graduate Prerequisites: one LS 300-level language course, or consent of instructor. - An ethnographic survey and sociolinguistic analysis of Spanish as spoken in urban areas of the US. Focuses on issues of language and dialect content, language change, the fraught notion of 'heritage' speakers, and code-switching as a sociolinguistic phenomenon. Conducted in Spanish.
• CAS LX 683: The Sounds of Spanish
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: one LS 300-level language course; or consent of instructor. - Introduction to Spanish phonetics and phonology. Covers articulatory, acoustic, and auditory phonetics, focusing on techniques for visualizing speech sounds. Examines the phonemic inventory and phonological organization of Spanish from several perspectives, including generative and articulatory phonology as well as sociolinguistics. Conducted in Spanish. Also offered as CAS LS 507. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS LX 507.
• CAS LX 684: The Structure of Spanish
  Graduate Prerequisites: one LS 300-level language course; or consent of instructor. - Introduction to Spanish morphology and syntax. Explores the structure of Spanish words, phrases, and sentences from multiple perspectives with a focus on natural language data. Examines Generative, Usage-based, and Lexical-Functional approaches to the analysis of grammatical structure. Conducted in Spanish. Also offered as CAS LS 508. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS LX 508.
• CAS LX 686: Topics in Spanish Linguistics
  Graduate Prerequisites: one LS 300-level language course. - Topics vary. Taught in Spanish. Also offered as CAS LS 505.
• CAS LX 690: Topics in Linguistics
  Topics and pre-requisites vary by semester and section. May be repeated for credit as topics change. The pre-requisite for all three Fall 2024 sections is CASLX250 or equivalent. Topics for Fall 2024: Section A1: Language Revitalization. Languages become "endangered" or "dormant" for multiple reasons, and efforts to revitalize languages take many paths. We examine key cases of language revitalization, including examples from around the world, but with a primary focus on indigenous languages of North America. Section B1: Cognitive Science of Language. This course serves as an introduction to studying language as a part of broader cognitive science, exploring questions about the nature of linguistic representations, how they are processed and acquired, and how they interact with other cognitive domains. Section C1: Lexical Semantics. Pre-requisite in addition to CASLF 250 is CASLX 331 or 631 or equivalent. Recommended is CASLX321/621 or equivalent; or consent of the instructor. Investigation of the traditional notion of morpheme as a “minimal form-meaning pairing," and its attendant difficulties. Students gain an appreciation of the relationship between word structure and word meaning across languages via a series of case studies.
• CAS LX 691: Linguistic Field Methods
  A team-based in-depth investigation of the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and lexicon of an African or other non-Indo-European language. Bi-weekly sessions with language consultant. Weekly trainings on methodology, ethics, analysis, and presentation of results. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration.
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  • Ethical Reasoning
  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Teamwork/Collaboration
• CAS LX 694: Introduction to Programming for Computational Linguistics
  Introduction to computational techniques to explore linguistic models and test empirical claims. Serves as an introduction to programming, algorithms, and data structures, focused on modern applications to Natural Language Processing. Topics include tagging and classification, parsing models, meaning representation, and information extraction. [Not intended for students with a background in programming or computer science] This course fulfills a single unit in the following BU Hub areas: Quantitative Reasoning II, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Quantitative Reasoning II
  • Research and Information Literacy
• CAS LX 703: Phonological Analysis
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS LX 601 (formerly CAS LX 510), or consent of instructor. - Survey of phonological theory and analysis, with focus on cross-linguistic typology of phonological systems. Phonological reasoning and argumentation skills are developed. Empirical coverage includes contrast, distinctive features, rules and constraints, opacity, tone, syllabification, stress, and interactions with morphology and syntax. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course entitled "Introduction to Phonology" that was previously numbered CAS LX 513.
• CAS LX 705: Prosody
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS LX 601 (formerly CAS LX 510), or consent of instructor. - Exploration of the melodic and rhythmic aspects of the languages of the world. Emphasis on theoretical and experimental approaches to cross-linguistic typology. Specific topics include syllables and syllable-weight, rhythm and speech timing; stress and metrics; tone and intonation. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same title that was previously numbered CAS LX 525.
• CAS LX 706: Advanced Topics in Phonology
  Graduate Prerequisites: CAS LX 403/ GRS LX 703 - Topics will vary. May be taken more than once for credit with different topics. First topic: Distinctive feature theory from Structuralism to the present. Issues include the putative universality of distinctive features, their phonetic underpinnings, tension among the various roles features play in the grammar, and applicability of features to phonology beyond consonants and vowels.
• CAS LX 722: Intermediate Syntax: Modeling Syntactic Knowledge
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS LX 621 (formerly CAS LX 522), or consent of instructor. - Using linguistic data drawn from a wide variety of languages, students develop a precise model of syntactic knowledge through evaluation of hypotheses and arguments. Exploration of major discoveries and phenomena from the linguistic literature.

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