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: Creativity/Innovation, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness. Effective Spring 2026, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Critical Thinking, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Historical Consciousness.
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  • Critical Thinking
  • 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 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 675: The History of the French Language
  Undergraduate pre-requisites: CASLX 250. - Overview of socio-historical and linguistic factors underpinning the emergence, development, and spread of the French language over time. Study of historical, societal, and political events, along with phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and orthographic changes. Representative texts demonstrate stages of language change. Effective Spring 2025, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
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  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Historical Consciousness
• CAS LX 683: The Sounds of Spanish
  Graduate 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.
• 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.
• CAS LX 690: Topics in Linguistics
  Topics and pre-requisites vary by semester and section. May be repeated for credit as topics change. Please see "Notes" for current offering.
• 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, 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.
• CAS LX 722: Intermediate Syntax: Modeling Syntactic Knowledge
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRSLX 621, 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.
• CAS LX 723: Advanced Syntax: Issues in Modern Syntactic Theory
  Graduate Prerequisites: CAS LX 631, or consent of instructor. Systematic development of a semantic theory of natural language, using the tools of model-theoretic semantics. In-depth study of the relation between meaning and grammar, and the relation between meaning and context. Graduate students compare two different theories of a chosen phenomenon in their final project..
• CAS LX 732: Intermediate Semantics: The Grammatical Construction of Meaning
  Graduate Prerequisites: CAS LX 631 (formerly CAS LX 502), or consent of instructor. - Systematic development of a semantic theory of natural language, using the tools of model-theoretic semantics. In-depth study of the relation between meaning and grammar, and the relation between meaning and context. This course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course entitled "Semantics II" that was previously numbered CAS LX 503.
• CAS LX 733: Experimental Pragmatics
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS LX 631 (formerly CAS LX 502), or consent of instructor. - Covers recent developments in the theory of pragmatics and related empirical findings obtained through a variety of experimental methods. Topics include scalar implicature and its relation to vagueness and imprecision, hyperbole, metaphor, irony, politeness, and the pragmatics of reference to objects in visual scenes. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Quantitative Reasoning II, Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation.
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  • Creativity/Innovation
  • Digital/Multimedia Expression
  • Quantitative Reasoning II
• CAS LX 754: Acquisition of Syntax
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRSLX621, or consent of instructor. Exploration of the character and course of acquisition of syntactic knowledge in both first and second language contexts. Covers methodological principles for conducting studies and analyzing data, and topics including development of verb movement, binding theory, morphosyntax, and tense expression.
• CAS LX 790: Intermediate Topics in Linguistics
  Prereq: Graduate standing or consent of instructor - Topics for Spring 2024: Advanced Morphophonology. Investigation of what morphology and phonology are, how they may or may not be distinct, and how they interact. Topics will vary, but may include: emergence, innateness, inflectional classes, morphomes, paradigms, rules and/or constraints, analogy, cyclicity, ineffability, and prosodic morphology.
• CAS LX 795: Quantitative Methods in Linguistics
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing in the Linguistics program, or consent of instructor. - Introduces students to quantitative approaches to linguistic data, including visualization, hypothesis testing, and data modeling. Students gain proficiency in R, an open-source statistical environment, and learn the logic behind statistical techniques, as well as practical skills for using them.
• CAS LX 796: Computational Linguistics
  Graduate Prerequisites: CAS LX 250 and CAS CS 112, or consent of instructor. - Introduction to computational techniques to explore linguistic models and test empirical claims. Serves as an introduction to concepts, algorithms, data structures, and tool libraries. Topics include tagging and classification, parsing models, meaning representation, corpus creation, information extraction. [Students who have already taken CAS LX 394/GRS LX 694 are not eligible to take this course.] Effective Spring 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of 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 799: Advanced Quantitative Methods for Linguistics
  Prerequiste: CASLX 795. - This course provides students who already have a foundation in statistical analysis with a deeper understanding of data management and visualization, (mixed effects) regression modeling, dimensionality reduction, model selection, contrast coding schemes, interaction, partitioning algorithms, and strategies for streamlining workflow.
• CAS LX 801: Seminar in Linguistic Research
  Advanced graduate students working on their qualifying research papers or thesis present and discuss work in progress. The course is organized thematically based on students' research areas. Readings each week are determined on the basis of the research discussed. 2 cr. per semester.