An overview of the study of language and linguistics intended to provide students with a clear understanding of human language and with the conceptual foundations of linguistics. The course will expose students to several major areas within linguistics: language acquisition, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. It will introduce the major tenets and principles of linguistics without surveying the areas treated in the other graduate courses in the department. It is a prerequisite for all other courses in the MA program.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. The study of language in its social context with a focus on language variation. Topics include language and social class, language and ethnicity, language and gender, and the study of standard versus nonstandard varieties of language.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. An investigation of the findings of theoretical syntax and the valuable insights which these provide for syntactic analysis in language teaching, for language-learning texts, for translation, for work in artificial intelligence, etc.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. An exploration of the main tenets of contemporary semantics and pragmatics, the areas of linguistics that examine various aspects of meaning. The course investigates the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics by studying utterance meaning as well as lexical and sentence meaning. Students will learn about the applications of semantics and pragmatics to a variety of areas of applied linguistics.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. The study of the basic principles of phonetics and phonology, and the relevance of these principles to a variety of applications, including foreign-language teaching, speech pathology, and the analysis and synthesis of speech by computer.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. A course to train students in research design, methodology and data collection procedures. Students learn basic skills which prepare them for administrative and research positions in fields such as language planning, ESL curriculum evaluation and language learning measurement.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. An investigation of the techniques used in discourse analysis, the branch of linguistics which studies how to analyze naturally occurring connected speech. Discourse analysis is the study of the organization of language above the sentence level including the structure of conversations. It considers language in a social context, in particular the language used in verbal interactions.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 510. Restricted to MA students in Applied Linguistics only. A discourse analytic examination and comparison of the verbal practices and communicative strategies of different linguistic, social, and cultural groups. Students will broaden their understanding of discourse analysis by investigating verbal interactions that take place in different languages and within a variety of cultural contexts.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. The study of the role of the linguist in the field of law. The course analyzes the difference between "truth" as defined by science and by the law. It describes how linguists can serve as "expert witnesses" in civil cases and in a wide range of criminal investigations. It also explores how dialect study, discourse analysis, lexical analysis, phonetics, pragmatics, etc. can provide linguistic evidence crucial to litigation.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. An in-depth analysis of the processes of child and adult second language acquisition (SLA) and how it differs from first language acquisition and the implications of these theories for the teaching and learning of second languages. The application of sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics to language teaching.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. A detailed analysis of the phonological and grammatical structures of American English; advanced study of the social and stylistic varieties of American English; various theories of English grammar are studied.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 520. The study of current issues in the teaching of English as a Second Language. Issues may include innovative teaching methodologies, the application of language learning theories to classroom teaching and the adaptation and development of instructional materials.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. This course is intended to introduce students to the use of computer-mediated language instruction and to the evaluation and selection of software for language learning. Students will learn about the integration of technology in language learning and teaching. Students will also explore various computer-assisted language learning tools, software, and platforms. Through hands-on activities and practical exercises, participants will gain the skills to design, develop, and implement effective Computer-Assisted Language Instruction materials and activities. Additionally, the course will cover the assessment and evaluation of CALL resources, as well as the role of artificial intelligence and natural language processing in language learning.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 520 and APLN 525. Basic concepts of testing: reliability, validity, correlation, etc. Statistical concepts: correlation coefficient, standard deviation, etc. Testing individual language skills: listening, reading, writing and oral proficiency. Testing communicative competence. Measuring language dominance in bilingualism.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 525 may be taken as prerequisite or corequisite. Completion of other required courses for TESL certification. To provide students who are seeking certification in Teaching English as a Second Language as a second teaching field, with an opportunity to teach ESL in a formal classroom setting. Arrangements will be made on an individual basis for each student.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. The study of the problems facing multilingual societies. The course explores the function of standard languages and the competition which often exists among different populations and languages. Topics include the role of language in ethnic loyalty, the dynamics of language loss and maintenance and the linguistic, economic, sociological, political and educational aspects of language planning.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. An investigation of the intimate connection between language, culture, and ethnic pride and identity. Study of the communication problems faced by bilingual children due to differences in verbal and non-verbal patterns of communication; survey of various instructional methods and models employed in teaching children from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds; study of the correlation between language and various socio-cultural factors.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. A study of the effects of bilingualism and multilingualism on society and on the languages involved. By examining a variety of examples, students become familiar with the possible outcomes of language contact and with the factors that play a role in language-policy decisions in multilingual societies. Pidgins and creoles are also studied.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. A survey of the indigenous, colonial, and immigrant languages of the U.S. and how they are used in education and general communication. Also studied are factors affecting the maintenance or loss of languages and the shift from native languages to English with discussion of the mutual effects of language contact.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): Applied Linguistics or Graduate Certificate in Computational Linguistics students only, or departmental approval. Design and analysis of computational models of language. Topics include finite state tools, computational morphology and phonology, grammar and parsing, lexical semantics, and the use of linguistic models in applied problems.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 550 or departmental approval. The objective of this course is to continue the study of natural language processing (NLP). Topics may vary, e.g.,computational lexical semantics, computational morphology, syntactic parsing, machine translation, opinion mining, sentiment analysis, etc. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 hours.
An introduction to the computer analysis of text for use in research and teaching. Students learn to develop software to search and manipulate written text and transcribed speech. Applications in computer assisted language learning, corpus linguistics, lexicography, and translation are considered.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. An exploration of the principles involved in providing semantic "equivalents" between two languages, emphasizing the problems of translating a variety of different types of texts which reflect major cross-cultural differences.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Language is a complex yet systematic natural phenomenon. Linguists seek to uncover the underlying systems of language using the tools of mathematics: we count, measure or model various aspects of linguistic behavior in order to test hypotheses and discover patterns about how language works. This hands‐on course will guide students through the most common quantitative methods in a range of linguistic subfields, using R or other statistical software packages. May be repeated for a maximum of 9 credits.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. The study of the principles of compiling dictionaries. Topics include: the collection and evaluation of citations, semantic fields, defining, recording pronunciations, and determining usage. Attention will be paid to the differences among different types of dictionaries. Sample dictionaries are examined and students carry out their own lexicographic project.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. The study of American sign language, or ASL, the manual language of many deaf Americans. This course approaches ASL from a linguistic perspective, examining its semantics, grammar, and "phonology", and comparing ASL with English and other spoken languages. ASL is also compared with other manual languages used in America, including signed English and "total communication". The educational implications of ASL and other manual languages are discussed.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Corpus Linguistics investigates how linguistic phenomena can be studied using large collections of language data that are available as machine-readable texts (corpora). This course introduces students to some of the commonly used methods and techniques for working with these large quantities of spoken and written language corpora.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500 or permission of instructor. Linguistic annotation of natural language is the practice of adding interpretative linguistic information to a corpus. Linguistic annotation of natural language corpora “adds value” to the corpus. It allows to manually or automatically extract linguistic examples to evaluate a theoretical hypothesis, help formalize and study linguistic phenomena. It is also the backbone of supervised methods or statistical natural language processing. This course introduces the students to the major aspects of linguistic annotation, such as creation/evaluation of annotation schemes, methods for automatic and manual annotation, use and evaluation of annotation software and frameworks, representation of linguistic data and annotations, evaluation of manual and automatically‐produced annotations.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. This course investigates linguistic aspects of mobile and computer-mediated communication in a variety of contexts and within specific social networks. Using publicly available corpora and a corpus of SMS text messages, students investigate various aspects of language on the go. These include linguistic simplifications, the structure of messages, stylistic variation, linguistic creativity, and the construction of personalized telephony-based networks.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. An intensive study in a particular area of applied linguistics to address topics not covered in other courses. Topics reflect current issues in applied linguistics. May be repeated once for a maximum of 6 credits as long as the topic is different.
Prerequisite(s): APLN 500. This course explores language as a cognitive function and examines the functioning of the mind through the study of language. It examines how cognitive mechanisms like memory, categorization, attention, and imagery are used during language behavior, and how psychologically viable models of language cover broad ranges of linguistic phenomena. It surveys the theoretical foundations of Cognitive Linguistics and the empirical evidence and arguments for it. Overall, the course considers the relationship between language and cognitive processing in the human brain, explains the conceptual structures and cognitive processes governing linguistic representation and behavior, and studies cognitive approaches to linguistic analysis, lexical semantics, and closely related frameworks of cognitive grammar and construction grammar.
Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only and departmental approval. This course allows MA students to explore areas in Applied Linguistics that are not covered in the normal course offerings. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credits.
Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only and departmental approval. This course allows MA students to explore areas in Applied Linguistics that are not covered in the normal course offerings. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credits.
Prerequisite(s): All other required courses for the MA degree in Applied Linguistics. Restriction(s): MA students in Applied Linguistics only. Research on an approved topic or on an approved reading list in Applied Linguistics. For this requirement, students write a paper based on a research topic that they choose or write a response to a research topic provided to them based on readings that they choose. The papers and/or responses will be read and approved by three faculty members. For this final research requirement, students give an oral presentation at a Linguistics Department colloquium. A grade of In Progress (IP) will be used until the research is completed; may be repeated two times.
Prerequisite(s): Completion of the MS in CL required core courses and permission of graduate coordinator. Restriction(s): Students with at least 20 credits may enroll. Analysis of a significant problem related to computational linguistics and natural language processing. The student will implement, test and document the solution. Students must work with a faculty mentor through an independent study on such projects.
Prerequisite(s): Departmental approval. Independent research project done under faculty advisement. Students must follow the MSU Thesis Guidelines, which may be obtained from the Graduate School. Equivalent course APLN 610 effective through Summer 2021.