Undergraduate Degrees
The Minor in Linguistics
Faculty Advisor: Mandy Simons
Office: Baker Hall 155E
Linguistics is the study of human language. It aims not merely to describe particular languages, but to characterize and account for the nature of language and for the human ability to learn and use it. Linguists address the phenomenon of language from a variety of perspectives. Some are concerned with the cognitive aspects of language learning, production and comprehension; some are concerned with language as a social and cultural phenomenon; others engage in the analysis of linguistic structure, some from a functional and others from a formal perspective. Some linguists are concerned with computational implementations of linguistic theory for both practical and theoretical purposes. In all cases, a central question for linguists is to understand not only the wonderful variety of the world’s languages but also what these languages have in common: what it is that makes a human language human. The study of language thus contributes vitally to our understanding of human society, human culture, and human minds.
The interdepartmental Minor in Linguistics is sponsored by the departments
of English, Modern Languages, Philosophy and Psychology and the Language Technologies
Institute. It synthesizes the linguistics related offerings in these departments
and provides students with an academic experience that reflects both the interdisciplinary
character of the subject and its cross-departmental representation at CMU.
A Major in Linguistics is also available. For information, click here.
Curriculum (54 units)
Linguistics Minors must complete six linguistics related courses. Of the six, three must be selected from the five core courses listed below. The remaining three courses may be selected from among any of the linguistics related courses taught in the four H&SS departments or the LTI.Students in the minor may choose to take advantage of the full range of approaches to the study of language represented here, or may choose to focus on a particular aspect of language study. Note, however, that some of the elective courses have particular core courses as prerequisites. Students should take this into account when they select their core courses.
Core Courses
| 76-386 | Language and Culture |
| 80-280 | Linguistic Analysis |
| 82-383 | Second Language Acquisition |
| 85-421 | Language and Thought (Psychology) |
| 11-582 | Language Technologies |
Note: If more than three courses are taken from this set, the additional ones will count as electives.
Elective Courses
| 76-385 | Introduction to Discourse Analysis |
| 76-389 | Grammar of Standard Written English |
| 76-411 | Events |
| 76-451 | Topics in Language Study* |
| 80-281 | Language and Thought (Philosophy) |
| 80-306 | Meaning in Language |
| 80-380 | Philosophy of Language |
| 82-280 | Learning about Language Learning |
| 82-388 | Understanding Second Language Fluency |
| 82-442 | Analysis of Spoken Spanish |
| 82-480 | Social and Cognitive Aspects of Bilingualism |
| 85-354 | Language Acquisition in Infancy and Childhood |
| 85-432 | Nonverbal Communicative Behavior |
| 11-511 | Algorithms for Natural Language Processing |
| 11-521 | Grammars and Lexicons |
| 11-531 | Machine Translation |
| 11-541 | Information Retrieval |
| 11-552 | Spech: Phonetics, Prosodics, Perception, and Synthesis |
*A variety of different courses are taught under this number/title. The course may be taken more than once, as long as the topic is different each time.