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COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES
LINGUISTICS

Detailed course offerings (Time Schedule) are available for

LING 200 Introduction to Linguistics (5) A&H/SSc, RSN
Language as the fundamental characteristic of the human species; diversity and complexity of human languages; phonological and grammatical analysis; dimensions of language use; and language acquisition and historical language change. Cannot be taken for credit if credit has already been earned for LING 400. Course overlaps with: LING 201.

LING 203 Introduction to Anthropological Linguistics (5) SSc/A&H
Linguistic methods and theories used within anthropology. Basic structural features of language; human language and animal communication compared; evidence for the innate nature of language. Language and culture: linguistic relativism, ethnography of communication, sociolinguistics. Language and nationalism, language politics in the United States and elsewhere. Offered: jointly with ANTH 203.

LING 210 Language and Thought (5) SSc
Investigates linguistic relativity, the extent to which language can impact non-linguistic cognitive processes. Evolution of the theory from its historical origins to current research. Evidence for/against the theory drawn from cross-linguistic case studies.

LING 212 Infant Brain and Language Development (5) NSc
Examines the interplay of biological and environmental factors in shaping language development in early childhood. Investigates how early language and brain growth are linked to children's opportunities to learn, affecting education and societies worldwide.

LING 220 Origins of the Germanic Languages (5) A&H
Introduction to basic grammatical concepts, terminology, and linguistics with emphasis on German-English relationship. Overview of phonology, morphology, syntax, and history of Germanic languages and people, both ancient and modern. Languages covered include Old, Middle, and New High German; English, Frisian, Dutch, Old Saxon, and Gothic. Taught in English. Offered: jointly with GERMAN 220.

LING 233 Introduction to Language and Society (5) A&H, DIV
Introduces the study of sociolects, the varieties of language that arise from differences in cultural and societal groups, often reflective of power inequalities. Raises awareness of the role that society and the individual play in shaping sociolects via the systematic observation and critical discussion of linguistic phenomena. Offered: jointly with ANTH 233/COM 233; A.

LING 234 Language and Diversity (5) SSc, DIV
Advances students' knowledge of language and diversity in a global society, focusing on language and identity, multilingualism, language contact, language spread/variation, and language loss.

LING 242 Introduction to Meaning (5) A&H
Non-technical introduction to meaning in language and how it functions in communication and thinking. Discussion of how and why meanings of words change through time.

LING 269 Swearing and Taboo Language (5) SSc
Examines swear words and taboo language, both within and across cultures, investigating their linguistic, pragmatic, neurological, psychological, social, and legal aspects.

LING 359 Language and Ethnicity (5) SSc/A&H, DIV
Explores the political, social, and linguistic contexts of language diversity in Inner Asia, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and the ongoing process of nation-state building efforts from sociolinguistic and ethnographic perspectives. Examines the power relationship between language and ethnicity, the role played by language in power inequalities, and inequality in the distribution of resources. Offered: jointly with MELC 359.

LING 373 Introduction to Localization and Project Management (5)
Covers basic concepts of translation, localization, and internationalization. Explores rationales for localizing products; history and future of the industry; workflows, professional roles, and localization tools. Includes the application of central concepts of localization to real-life situations; and introduction to the basics of localization project management. Offered: jointly with FRENCH 373.

LING 374 Localization: Technology and Tools (5)
Covers basic concepts of localization and internationalization. Examines how technology and tools are applied to solving translation and localization scenarios in the real world. Includes daily tasks and basic steps; machine translation; community localization; and experience with actual localization tools. Offered: jointly with FRENCH 374.

LING 390 Foreign Studies in Linguistics (1-15, max. 20) SSc
For students who take linguistics courses while participating in a 天美影视传媒 study abroad program and for which there is no direct 天美影视传媒 equivalent.

LING 400 Survey of Linguistic Method and Theory (5) SSc/A&H, RSN
Examines major linguistic theories in phonology, syntax and semantics; linguistic analysis and argumentation.

LING 401 The Linguistic, Philosophical, and Political Thought of Noam Chomsky (3) A&H/SSc
Relation of current work in Chomskyan linguistics to philosophical, psychological, political, and educational thought. Prerequisite: LING 200 or LING 400.

LING 403 Linguistics of Signed Languages (5) A&H
Introduction to the phonological, morphological, and syntactic structure of American Sign Language. Topics include acquisition, sociolinguistics, neurolinguistics, lexicography, history, and culture. Knowledge of American Sign Language is not required. Prerequisite: LING 200, LING 203, or LING 400

LING 407 Languages of the World (5) A&H
A survey of the world's languages, focusing on their syntactic, phonological, and morphological properties. Prerequisite: either LING 200, LING 201, ANTH/LING 203, or LING 400.

LING 410 Introduction to Historical Linguistics (5) A&H
Method and theory of historical linguistics. Phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic change and reconstruction. Prerequisite: LING 200.

LING 411 Native Languages and Language Families of Washington State (3) A&H
Survey of linguistic structures of Washington native languages. Language families consist of Salish, Wakashan, Chemakuan, Athabaskan, Chinookan, Sahaptian, Cayuse. Structure and origin of Chinook jargon. Prerequisite: LING 450; either LING 461 or LING 481.

LING 412 Japanese Syntax and Semantics (5) A&H
Introduces issues in Japanese syntax and semantics. Emphasizes description generalizations, rather than theoretical proposals. Prerequisite: either LING 200 or LING 400; recommended: LING 461; at least two years of coursework in Japanese. Offered: jointly with JAPAN 442.

LING 415 History of the German Language (5) A&H
Traces the history of the German language from early Germanic to the present. Offered: jointly with GERMAN 452; W.

LING 419 Romance Linguistics Senior Essay (3) A&H
Capstone course for undergraduate Romance Linguistic majors.

LING 421 R for Linguists (5) RSN
Introduction to the R programming language and environment for character processing, validation, summarization, and visualization of linguistic data. Students learn to work with different datatypes (numeric, character strings, geographic information, lists). Students produce scripts of utility to researchers in different linguistic subfields (including corpus linguistics, phonetics, sociolinguistics, syntax). Prerequisite: LING 200 or LING 400; recommended: An introductory linguistics course.

LING 430 Pidgin and Creole Languages (5) SSc/A&H
Explores aspects of the linguistic structure, history, and social context of pidgin and creole languages. Creolization as one possible outcome of language contact. Examines theories of creole genesis, similarities and differences between creole and non-creole languages. Prerequisite: either ANTH 203, LING 200, LING 201, LING 203, or LING 400. Offered: jointly with ANTH 439.

LING 432 Sociolinguistics I (5) SSc/A&H, DIV
Interrelationships between social and linguistic factors influencing variation in speech production and perception, morphology, syntax, lexicon. Considers contribution of ethnic, regional and socioeconomic group memberships to dialect differentiation and progression of language change. Nonstandard language, diglossia, pidgins, creoles, gender differences, bi- and multilingualism, ethnography of speaking, pragmatics, and language attitudes. Prerequisite: either LING 200 or LING 400. Offered: jointly with ANTH 432.

LING 433 Sociolinguistics II (5) A&H/SSc
Examines field methods linguists use in socially oriented studies of language variation and change. Includes language attitudes, study of urban dialects, syntactic variation, sampling and interview design. Discussion of issues related to recording, ethics, and analysis of large bodies of data. Prerequisite: LING 432. Offered: jointly with ANTH 433.

LING 441 Language Processing and Development 1 (5) SSc/NSc
This course explores current research on language processing and development in adult native speakers and children, with a focus on sound and word-level representations. Topics include speech perception, word recognition, acquisition of phonology and word meanings, as well as a variety of methodologies that are used to study these mechanisms. Prerequisite: LING 200 or LING 400.

LING 442 Language Processing and Development 2 (5) SSc
Overview of research on language processing and development in adult native speakers and children, with a focus on the sentence-level representations. Topics include processing of syntactic/semantic representations, development of morpho-syntax, semantics and pragmatics, as well as variety of methodologies for studying these mechanisms. Prerequisite: LING 200 or LING 400.

LING 449 Second-Language Learning (5) A&H
Issues related to the linguistic aspects of second-language learning. Prerequisite: either LING 200, LING 201, ANTH/LING 203, or LING 400.

LING 450 Introduction to Linguistic Phonetics (5) NSc/A&H
Introduction to the articulatory and acoustic correlates of phonological features. Issues covered include the mapping of dynamic events to static representations, phonetic evidence for phonological description, universal constraints on phonological structure, and implications of psychological speech-sound categorization for phonological theory. Prerequisite: either LING 200 or LING 400.

LING 451 Phonology I (5) SSc/A&H
Patterning of sounds and gestures in human languages; analysis in generative phonological framework. Prerequisite: LING 450.

LING 452 Phonology II (5) SSc/A&H
Speech sounds, mechanism of their production, and structuring of sounds in languages; generative view of phonology; autosegmental and metrical phonology. Prerequisite: LING 451.

LING 453 Experimental Phonetics (5) NSc/SSc/A&H
Examines phonetic and phonological aspects of spoken language using experimental methods. Focuses on acoustic phonetics and speech perception. Significant time devoted to experimental design and hands-on data analysis techniques. Prerequisite: LING 450.

LING 455 Areal Linguistics (3, max. 6) A&H/SSc
Issues involved in classification of languages. Systems of classification based on structure, word order, areal features. Ways in which languages may be classified for different purposes. Processes such as borrowing, vocabulary specialization, lexical change, and language death and revival. Prerequisite: either LING 200, LING 201, ANTH/LING 203, or LING 400. Offered: jointly with ANTH 455.

LING 457 Turkic Linguistics (5) A&H
Survey of the nature and structure of the Turkic languages, focusing on phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, writing systems, history and cultural context, subgrouping and diversification, and linguistic theoretical principles for their description and analysis. Offered: jointly with MELC 457.

LING 458 Language and Gender (5) SSc/A&H, DIV
Survey of the theoretical trends, methods, and research findings on the relationship between language and gender. Focus on power relations in gendered language use. Extensive study of research based on conversational analysis. Prerequisite: LING 200; either LING 201, LING 203, or ANTH 203. Offered: jointly with ANTH 450/GWSS 450.

LING 461 Syntax I (5) SSc/A&H
Study of the structural properties of language; introduction to generative transformational syntax. Prerequisite: either LING 200 or LING 400.

LING 462 Syntax II (5) A&H/SSc
Study of the structural properties of language; introduction to generative transformational syntax. Prerequisite: LING 461.

LING 463 Syntax III (4) SSc/A&H
Study of the structural properties of language; introduction to generative transformational syntax. Prerequisite: LING 462.

LING 464 Language Politics and Cultural Identity (3) A&H/SSc
Theories and case studies of the power of language and how it is manipulated. Multilingualism, diglossia. Role of language and linguistics in nationalism. Standardization, educational policy, language and ethnicity. World languages, language death and revival. Prerequisite: either LING 200, LING 201, ANTH/LING 203, or LING 400. Offered: jointly with ANTH 464.

LING 470 Discourse: Analyzing Talk and Texts (5) A&H/SSc, DIV
A critical and practical introduction to contemporary theories/methods in discourse analysis: how verbal communication (together with visual communication) is used in conversational talk and mediatized texts to construct identities and relationships; and how power and ideology are reproduced through these everyday social interactions. Offered: jointly with COM 470.

LING 471 Computational Methods for Linguists (5) RSN
Overview of methods for working with linguistic data in electronic form: electronic corpora, linguistic software tools, textual data formats, operating system fundamentals, and basic programming.

LING 472 Introduction to Computational Linguistics (5) A&H/NSc
Introduction to computational approaches to modeling language, for linguistic research and practical applications, including analyses at different levels of linguistic structure and symbolic as well as statistical approaches. Prerequisite: either LING 200 or LING 400; either LING 461 or CSE 311. Offered: jointly with CSE 472.

LING 473 Basics for Computational Linguistics (3)
Examines computer applications involving automatic processing of natural language speech or text by machines. Intended as preparation for CLMS core courses. Includes concepts form probability and statistics; formal grammars and languages; finite-state automata and transducers; review of algorithms and data structures; and software for using parallel server cluster. Prerequisite: CSE 326; STAT 391; programming in Perl, C, C++, Java, or Python. Offered: S.

LING 476 Philosophy of Language (5) A&H/SSc
Current theories of meaning, reference, predication, and related concepts. Offered: jointly with PHIL 453.

LING 478 Semantics I (5) NSc/A&H
Introduction to the study of meaning as part of linguistic theory. Relation of semantics to syntax. Emphasis on formal semantics and pragmatics. Discussion of various semantic phenomena in natural language that are theoretically relevant. Prerequisite: LING 461.

LING 479 Semantics II (3) A&H/SSc/NSc
Formal characterization of linguistic meaning. Emphasis on nature and purpose of formal semantics and on its relation to formal syntax. Prerequisite: LING 478 Offered: jointly with PHIL 479.

LING 480 Topics in Linguistics (3, max. 12) A&H
Introduction to an area of linguistic study not covered by the regular departmental course offerings.

LING 481 Introduction to Morphology (5) A&H
Structure of words and the processes by which they are formed. Morphological processes in a wide variety of languages. Prerequisite: LING 450.

LING 490 Undergraduate Fieldwork (1-5, max. 15)
Individual consultation with faculty member and supervised practical experience in a broad range of industry, community, clinical settings dealing with linguistic issues. Credit/no-credit only.

LING 498 Undergraduate Honors Research (1-5, max. 12) SSc
Research towards departmental honors in Linguistics. Recommended: LING 433/ANTH 433; LING 442; LING 452; and LING 462. Offered: AWSpS.

LING 499 Undergraduate Research (1-5, max. 10)

LING 501 Field Methods (3)
Guided analysis of a language unfamiliar to all students of the class; construction of a grammar based on material elicited from native informant. Prerequisite: LING 452, LING 462, or LING 508.

LING 502 Field Methods (3)
Guided analysis of a language unfamiliar to all students of the class; construction of a grammar based on material elicited from native informant. Prerequisite: LING 452, LING 462, or LING 508.

LING 503 Field Methods (3)
Guided analysis of a language unfamiliar to all students of the class; construction of a grammar based on material elicited from native informant. Prerequisite: LING 453, LING 462, or permission of instructor.

LING 507 Syntactic Theory I (5)
Introduction to the principles and parameters model of syntactic theory. The lexicon and its relation to syntactic representations. Syntactic modules and principles. Problem solving.

LING 508 Syntactic Theory II (5)
Further explorations in principles and parameters syntax. Topics include logical form, island phenomena, locality restrictions, and licensing. Prerequisite: LING 507 or permission of instructor.

LING 510 Introduction to Historical Linguistics (5)
Method and theory of historical linguistics. Phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic change and reconstruction. Prerequisite: LING 200.

LING 515 Topics in the History of Germanic Languages (5)
Topics in diachronic studies of Germanic languages such as Gothic, Old High German, Old Saxon.

LING 516 History of the Chinese Language (5)
Provides an overview of the phonology, morphology, and grammar of Old and Middle Chinese and the most significant changes that have taken place from Old to Modern Chinese. Prerequisite: either LING 200, ANTH 203/LING 203, CHIN 342, or CHIN 442; recommended: An introductory linguistics course

LING 520 Introduction to Statistics for Linguists (5)
Introduction to statistical methods used in linguistics research. Focuses on understanding reports of statistical results and applying statistical methods to data sets. Prerequisite: LING 200 or LING 400; recommended: An introductory linguistics course.

LING 521 R for Linguists (5)
Introduction to the R programming language and environment for character processing, validation, summarization, and visualization of linguistic data. Students learn to work with different datatypes (numeric, character strings, geographic information, lists). Students produce scripts of utility to researchers in different linguistic subfields (including corpus linguistics, phonetics, sociolinguistics, syntax). Prerequisite: LING 200 or LING 400; recommended: An introductory linguistics course.

LING 530 Dialectology (3)
The principles of dialect deviation as related to linguistic structure and usage. Prerequisite: LING 452, LING 462, LING 508, or permission of instructor. Offered: jointly with ANTH 530.

LING 532 Sociolinguistics I (5)
Examines social variation in the phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon of languages and dialects. Includes nonstandard language, diglossia, pidgins and creoles, gender differences, bi- and multilingualism, ethnography of speaking, and language attitudes. Prerequisite: either LING 200 or LING 400. Offered: jointly with ANTH 532; S.

LING 533 Topics and Methods in Sociolinguistic Theory (5)
Examines field methods linguists use in socially oriented studies of language variation and change. Includes language attitudes, study of urban dialects, syntactic variation, sampling and interview design. Discussion of issues related to recording, ethics, and analysis of large bodies of data. Prerequisite: LING 432.

LING 534 Sociolinguistic Applications of Social Network Theory (5)
Examines structure and content of social networks from a linguistic perspective. Reviews applications of graph theory and sociometry in sociolinguistics. Examines how language is embedded in personal networks and how the study of linkages between individuals can elucidate the regularity and direction of language change. Prerequisite: LING 400 and LING 432.

LING 535 Advanced Sociolinguistics (5, max. 10)
Explores perspective on language change and its mechanisms, understood in relation to the social context of language use in the speech community. Examines language-internal and -external motivations for change; phonological mergers and splits, chain-shifts, and diffusion of change through the lexicon. Prerequisite: LING 432 and LING 533.

LING 541 Language Processing and Development 1 (5)
Explores current research on language processing and development in adult native speakers and children, with a focus on sound and word-level representations. Topics include speech perception, word recognition, acquisition of phonology and word meanings, as well as a variety of methodologies that are used to study these mechanisms.

LING 542 Language Processing and Development 2 (5)
Explores current research on language processing and development in adult native speakers and children, with a focus on the sentence-level representations. Topics include processing of syntactic/semantic representations, development of morpho-syntax, semantics and pragmatics, as well as a variety of methodologies that are used to study these mechanisms. Prerequisite: LING 200 OR LING 400.

LING 548 Second/Foreign Language Teaching Capstone Project (3-5)
Involves a research (original or library), materials development, or a teaching practicum.

LING 549 Second Language Learning (5)
Issues related to the linguistic aspects of second language learning. Prerequisite: either LING 200, LING 201, LING 203, or LING 400.

LING 550 Introduction to Linguistic Phonetics (5)
Introduction to the articulatory and acoustic correlates of phonological features. Covers mapping of dynamic events to static presentations, phonetic evidence for phonological description, universal constraints on phonological structure, and implications of psychological speech-sound categorization for phonological theory. Prerequisite: graduate student status.

LING 551 Phonology I: Introduction to Phonological Analysis (5)
Patterning of sounds and gestures in human languages; analysis in generative phonological framework. Prerequisite: LING 550

LING 552 Phonology II: Advanced Phonology (5)
Optimality theory; phonetics-phonology interface. Prerequisite: LING 551.

LING 553 Experimental Phonetics (5)
Examines phonetic and phonological aspects of spoken language using experimental methods. Focuses on acoustic phonetics and speech perception. Significant time devoted to experimental design and hands-on data analysis techniques. Prerequisite: LING 550.

LING 554 Advanced Linguistic Phonetics (3, max. 9)
Individual and joint projects on selected topics in theoretical and experimental phonetics. Topics may include articulatory timing, the phonetics phonology interface, and constraints and constraint interaction. Prerequisite: LING 450 or LING 452.

LING 557 Turkic Linguistics (5)
Survey of the nature and structure of the Turkic languages, focusing on phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, writing systems, history and cultural context, subgrouping and diversification, and linguistic theoretical principles for their description and analysis. Offered: jointly with MELC 557.

LING 560 Language and Ethnicity (5)
Explores the political, social, and linguistic contexts of language diversity in Inner Asia, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and the ongoing process of nation-state building efforts from sociolinguistic and ethnographic perspectives. Examines the power relationship between language and ethnicity, the role played by language in power inequalities, and inequality in the distribution of resources. Offered: jointly with MELC 560.

LING 566 Introduction to Syntax for Computational Linguistics (3)
Introduction to syntactic analysis and concepts with emphasis on the formally precise encoding in linguistic hypotheses and the design of grammars that can be scaled to practical applications. Coursework progressively builds up a consistent grammar for a fragment of English, while also considering data and phenomena from other languages. Offered: A.

LING 567 Knowledge Engineering for Deep Natural Language Processing (3)
Techniques and theoretical issues relating to the development of knowledge engineering resources required for deep processing (symbolic or hybrid), focusing on grammar engineering and semantic representations. Prerequisite: LING 566.

LING 570 Shallow Processing Techniques for Natural Language Processing (4)
Techniques and algorithms for associating relatively surface-level structures and information with natural language corpora, including POS tagging, morphological analysis, preprocessing/segmentation, named-entity recognition, chunk parsing, and word-sense disambiguation. Examines linguistic resources that can be leveraged for these tasks (e.g., WordNet). Prerequisite: a minimum grade of 2.7 in CSE 373; and either a minimum grade of 2.7 in MATH 394/STAT 394, a minimum grade of 3.0 in LING 473, or a passing grade on the CLMS placement exam. Offered: AW.

LING 571 Deep Processing Techniques for Natural Language Processing (4)
Algorithms for associating deep or elaborated linguistic structures with naturally occurring linguistic data (parsing/semantics/discourse), and for producing natural language strings from input semantic representations (generation). Prerequisite: a minimum grade of 2.7 in CSE 373; and either a minimum grade of 2.7 in MATH 394/STAT 394, a minimum grade of 3.0 in LING 473, or a passing grade on the CLMS placement exam. Offered: AW.

LING 572 Advanced Statistical Methods in Natural Language Processing (4)
Covers several important machine learning algorithms for natural language processing including decision tree, kNN, Naive Bayes, transformation-based learning, support vector machine, maximum entropy and conditional random field. Students implement many of the algorithms and apply these algorithms to some NLP tasks." Prerequisite: LING 570. Offered: W.

LING 573 Natural Language Processing Systems and Applications (4)
Examines building coherent systems to handle practical applications. Particular topics vary. Possible topics include information retrieval/extraction, natural language query systems, dialogue systems, augmentative and alternative communications, computer-assisted language learning, language documentation, spell/grammar checking, and software localization. Prerequisite: LING 570, LING 571, LING 572. Offered: Sp.

LING 574 Deep Learning for Natural Language Processing (4)
Deep learning methods for Natural Language Processing (NLP). Covers static word embeddings, feed-forward networks for text, recurrent neural networks, transformers, pre-training and transfer learning, with applications including sentiment analysis, translation, generation. Prerequisite: LING 572 or equivalent machine learning course; knowledge of programming in Python; experience with Linux/Unix commands; familiarity with linear algebra; and knowledge of multivariable calculus (especially partial derivatives/gradients of multivariable functions). Offered: Sp.

LING 575 Topics in Computational Linguistics (3, max. 30)
In-depth study of a particular area of computational linguistics, with hands-on experience. Prerequisite: LING 570 and 571, or permission of instructor. Offered: WSp.

LING 578 Semantic Theory I (5)
Introduction to formal semantics and pragmatics. Basic skills for proposing compositional semantic rules for natural language data. Discussion of various semantic phenomena in natural language that are theoretically relevant. Prerequisite: graduate standing in Linguistics or permission of instructor.

LING 579 Semantic Theory II (5)
Advanced introduction to the formal semantics of natural language. Emphasizes the interface between syntax and semantics. Prerequisite: LING 578

LING 580 Problems in Linguistics (2-4, max. 99.9)
Advanced study in current theories of syntax, semantics, phonology, or morphology. Can be repeated for credit.

LING 581 Morphology (5)
Explores the structure of words and the processes by which they are formed. Morphological processes in a wide variety of languages. Prerequisite: either LING 450, LING 550, or equivalent.

LING 582 Capturing Brain Dynamics: A Combined Neuroscience and Engineering Approach (4)
Introduces methods for capturing brain dynamics using an emerging neuroimaging technique know as magnetoencephalography (MEG). Uses techniques to examine perception and cognitive processes and their implications for future brain-computer-interface (BCI) design. Prepare students for interdisciplinary research in neuroscience and engineering. Offered: jointly with SPHSC 594; W.

LING 590 Graduate Fieldwork (1-10, max. 10)
Individual consultation with faculty member and supervised practical experience in a broad range of industry, community, clinical settings dealing with linguistic issues.

LING 599 Linguistics Colloquium (1, max. 6)
Seminar attended by faculty and graduate students to discuss research in progress and topics of general interest. Presentation of two seminars required for doctoral students. Prerequisite: permission of instructor.

LING 600 Independent Study or Research (*-)

LING 700 Master's Thesis (*-)

LING 800 Doctoral Dissertation (*-)