ENDANGERED LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE DEATH (UPenn, Fall 2023)

QUESTIONS OF NORMALCY (UPenn, Fall 2023)

WRITING AND LANGUAGE (YALP, Summer 2023)

The invention of writing was a major breakthrough in human history since it allowed us to record and convey information beyond our immediate surroundings. This course zooms in on the history and linguistics of writing/reading. We will touch upon the origins and typology of writing systems and the role of phonology, morphology, and other levels of linguistic structure in their design. We will focus on the oldest recorded systems of representing language, such as Cuneiform, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and some other forms of writing used in West Asia.

WRITING SYSTEMS AND ORTHOGRAPHIC PROCESSING (Princeton, Spring 2023)

The invention of writing was a major breakthrough in human history since it allowed us to record and convey information beyond our immediate surroundings. This course zooms in on the history and linguistics of writing/ reading. The first half of the course discusses the origins and typology of writing systems, as well as the role of phonology, morphology, and other levels of linguistic structure in their design. In the second half, we focus on psycholinguistic aspects of writing/reading, namely, how graphic representations map onto mental representations of words, opening a window into the ways adults read across languages and writing systems.

INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS (Princeton, Fall 2022)

The incredible variety of languages around the world is due to the fact that languages evolve and each one follows its own distinctive and unpredictable path of evolution. In this class, students will examine various models of language change and the factors that influence it. By utilizing fundamental techniques such as the Comparative Method and Method of Internal Reconstruction, students will develop the ability to scrutinize phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic transformations in languages. The course will also cover the process of reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European language and its speakers. Emphasis will be placed on applying these methods to a range of datasets.

MORPHOLOGIES IN CONTACT (YALP, tentative, Summer 2021)

The goal of this course is to familiarize students with a number of foundational readings in contact linguistics with a particular focus on morphological contacts, which is considered to be a much rarer phenomenon than, say, borrowing of lexical and functional elements. Overall, we’ll zoom out to see what linguists currently think about language change and what it means to be a grammar in contact, and we’ll zoom in on some individual cases of morphological borrowing in the languages of the world.

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS (UPenn (TA), Fall 2020, Spring 2019, Fall 2017)

A general introduction to the nature, history and use of human language, speech and writing.

MORPHOLOGY (YALP, Summer 2019)

How is linguistic meaning organized at the word level, and how is it packaged in different languages of the world? This problem-based introductory course will revolve around some fundamental questions in morphology, the study of the building blocks of which words and sentences consist. How do we define words in a way that would be useful for linguistic theory? What is the difference between various types of affixes such as prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes, infixes, and transfixes? Can affixes “see” each other, and what can block them from doing that? What are the most challenging morphological patterns we can find across the languages of the world? All of these theory-oriented questions will be supplemented with problem sets and examples drawn from various languages including those spoken in and around the Caucasus, an extremely rich and diverse linguistic area as far as morphology is concerned. No prior background is required. Students looking to develop a project/thesis idea are especially welcome to attend.

GAMES AND SIGNALS (UPenn (TA for Robin Clark), Fall 2018)

Theories of linguistic meaning have generally assumed that the speaker and the hearer can coordinate their behavior on the basis of common interest. In the real world, of course, interests rarely align perfectly; rather, our interests are often only partially aligned and sometimes are in opposition. Games of incomplete information provide an interesting framework for modeling partially aligned interests. In these games, the signaler and the receiver are not sure which game is being played, but, rather, must update their beliefs based on the signals they send and receive. These games provide an interesting model of speech acts and information transmission, one that allows us to investigate models of pragmatic behavior.

FUNDAMENTALS OF SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS (YALP, Summer 2018)

This introductory-level course will acquaint you with some of the key topics in contemporary syntactic theory, a subfield of linguistics that explores complex hierarchical structures such as words and sentences. For example, how do we explain the fact that unlockable can both mean ‘not capable of being locked’ and ‘capable of being unlocked’? Or what is the function of ‘it’ in a sentence like It snowed heavily yesterday? These are some of the topics to be addressed. As an integral part of this course, we will also focus on more hands-on techniques of how to analyze the natural language data, with examples drawn from English, Armenian, and Russian. Although there are multiple approaches to syntax on the market right now, this class will focus on doing syntactic analysis using a transformational framework such as Minimalism.