Language Signed and Spoken

Undergraduate

This course focuses on an aspect of cognition that is uniquely human: the language faculty. We ask, what do we know when we know a language? How do we characterize the abstract knowledge that allows us to understand and produce the infinite number of sentences of our native languages? We address these questions the way linguists do, by analyzing the properties that human languages share and how they can be different. In particular, we look at how languages combine smaller units to form words and how they combine words to form sentences, with the goal of understanding the mental rules that characterize a native speaker's knowledge of language. For many centuries, human language has been studied by analyzing only spoken languages, those produced via speaking and perceived via hearing. Now we can also study it by analyzing signed languages, those produced via hand movements and facial expressions, and perceived visually. In this course. We look at languages in both modalities to reach a deeper understanding of the language faculty. SO MW 2:35pm-3:50pm