This course prepares students to engage with English language linguistics in public settings. Students will critically analyze what role the English language has in society, and learn how linguists can help answer the public’s questions about the English language. Topics may include: what common misconceptions the general public has about language; the disconnect between what linguistics is and what the public wants to know about language, and how to bridge between this gap; dismantling English-supremacist attittudes and linguistic prejudices around the world; designing research to assess public attitudes about language.

This course introduces students to the nature and uses of discourse analysis, notably the types of data on which it draws and its descriptive and critical goals. Topics addressed include discourse structures, participants in discourse, links across texts, the role of medium, and the importance of intention and interpretation.

The best estimate of linguists suggests that English is spoken (natively and non-natively) by around one billion people today. This makes it the most widely spoken language in the world. Within this language exists a high degree of global dialect diversity. In this course, we will examine the structure and history of Englishes around the world including British, North American, Antipodean, Caribbean, African, and Asian varieties. Students will also consider structural and sociolinguistic issues associated with English as a global language including creolization, post-creolization, the diffusion of innovation, language policy, and the linguistic effects of colonialism. 

The grammars of living languages are constantly changing, never so obviously than when we compare different stages of a language over a long period of time: words change form and are sometimes repurposed; new words enter and others are lost; morphology rises and falls; syntactic possibilities can change dramatically. How do such changes arise, and what does it mean for a language to change? The aim of this course is to introduce students to the field of diachronic linguistics: its relationship to general linguistics, its primary research methods, and its major achievements. Students will gain practical experience solving classic language change problems, performing their own analyses, and reading contemporary literature in the field.

This course examines languages recently created by means of contact between languages of different socio-economical status. Analysis of these new languages is of particular interest to linguistic theory since it offers insight on the construction of linguistic systems, language evolution and on how language is acquired in such a context. Emphasis is given to the description and analysis of French-based pidgins and Creoles spoken in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean region.

Linguistics courses contain a lot of language data, but the data is sometimes disconnected from the people, communities, and cultures that use the language. In contrast, in this course, students actively engage with language in context. The course focuses on language documentation, introducing students to the source of linguistic datasets and to the ethics of language documentation. We will examine historical changes in how languages are documented, along with the contributions that community involvement has made to the field of linguistics. We will analyze the importance of contextual factors like culture, history, and geography in shaping languages, by exploring specific case studies of language-context connection. Finally, we will look in depth at language marginalization and the causes of language loss and endangerment. In doing so, we will learn about what it means for a language to be endangered, factors that contribute to language shift, and revitalization efforts that aim to reverse it.

Students develop critical reading and writing skills through the analysis of influential articles that broach broad and controversial topics in linguistics. One goal of the course is to develop skill in understanding how a text “works”, to form a reasoned evaluation of it, and to appreciate its place in a larger debate. Another goal is to develop skill in communicating complex ideas through a variety of means relevant to the academic community.

This course explores the linguistic features and characteristics of African languages. Attention will be given to the phonetic, phonological, morphological, and syntactic components of the languages to be studied, with emphasis on examining under-represented and under-studied languages. No prior knowledge of an African language is necessary.

This course offers a linguistic introduction to the features and characteristics of the Chinese languages. Attention will be given to the phonological, morphological and syntactic patterns of the language family, set against the backdrop of its linguistic and sociolinguistic history. The course not only examines the characteristics of Mandarin but also various other varieties of Chinese. No prior knowledge of a Chinese language is necessary.

Have you ever wondered why some languages have no word for the? What happens when a language has no tense? Why some languages have tone and others don’t? And what on earth does eh? mean, eh?

If so, this course is for you! In this course, we will consider linguistic phenomena that you might not find in your intro textbooks, but which are important typologically and commonly found across the world’s languages. And we will study them in-depth, in a scientifically informed way: building on your foundation in modern linguistics, you will be introduced to key concepts and theoretical tools that linguists use to analyze these phenomena. In short, the goal is to show you how your foundational theoretical toolbox can be extended to systematically understand a broader set of linguistic properties.

Topics will vary from year to year but may include: nouns and classifiers, verbs and event structure, tonogenesis, speech acts and speech act-level phenomena. Year to year, instructors may focus on phenomena common to a particular region of the world.

This course examines theoretical research on adult second language learning and the resultant implications for second language teaching. Topics include learning styles and strategies, age, affect, communicative competence, and sociolinguistics. Links are drawn to teaching practices, including error correction, materials selection, and order and method of presentation.

This course examines language acquisition by different populations: first language acquisition by normal, deaf and impaired children; first language re-acquisition by aphasic patients; second language acquisition by children and adults. The question that we will ask is the following: what are the similarities and differences across acquisition contexts? Comparative theoretical approaches will be examined in order to gain an insight into the following topics: evidence for innate linguistic endowment, the stages in the development of grammar, the role of input. An important component will be the analysis of both spontaneous corpora and experimental work.

This course provides an overview of second language vocabulary acquisition research and the resultant implications for second language teaching. Topics include dimensions of vocabulary knowledge, incidental and intentional vocabulary learning, textbook analysis, learning strategies, and teacher beliefs about vocabulary teaching and learning. Implications are drawn for pedagogical practices, including best vocabulary teaching practices, materials selection, and measuring vocabulary knowledge.

This course provides senior undergraduate students who have developed some knowledge of research methods used in the discipline of Linguistics to work in the research project of a U of T Mississauga professor for course credit. Enrolled students have the opportunity to become involved in original research, develop their research skills, and share in the excitement and discovery of acquiring new knowledge. Project descriptions for participating faculty members for the following summer and fall/winter sessions are posted on the ROP website in mid-February; students are invited to apply at that time. See Experiential and International Opportunities for more details.

This course provides senior undergraduate students who have developed some knowledge of research methods used in the discipline of Linguistics to work in the research project of a U of T Mississauga professor for course credit. Enrolled students have the opportunity to become involved in original research, develop their research skills, and share in the excitement and discovery of acquiring new knowledge. Project descriptions for participating faculty members for the following summer and fall/winter sessions are posted on the ROP website in mid-February; students are invited to apply at that time. See Experiential and International Opportunities for more details.

This course examines topics which have created controversy in linguistics, topics about which scholars have expressed opposing views through published articles. By reading and discussing these debates, students will galvanize their knowledge base in linguistics and develop skills in identifying the authors' assumptions, assessing their argumentation and recognizing how linguists build arguments to present an opposing view. The topics may range from big picture questions like the validity of Universal Grammar to more specific questions about a linguistic phenomenon. By the end of the course, students will have developed more acute reading skills, thereby also improving their academic writing skills. The title of the course might sound scary, but the course itself is not at all!

Introduction to the main methods, tools and techniques used in the analysis, interpretation and presentation of linguistic data. Topics may include research in the areas of general linguistics, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and dialectology. This course involves a practical component where students will apply skills learned in order to carry out their own study. Note that a background in statistics is NOT required for this course.

This course provides experience in language analysis based on elicited data from a native speaker of an understudied language. It emphasizes procedures and techniques and provides an opportunity for first-hand appreciation of linguistic unity and diversity.

Much of linguistic theory assumes the existence of an “ideal speaker/hearer” of a given language. However, in the real world, particularly in linguistically diverse communities such as the GTA, there is an enormous amount of variability driven by differences in language background, regional affiliation, and social factors. This course examines the many factors contributing to accentedness, and how listeners adapt their perception when confronted with different accents. It also explores how models of language development, processing, and production account for accent-related variability.

How can we get a computer system to carry out meaningful tasks, such as determining if a restaurant review is positive ? How can computational experiments help linguists understand meaning and its use better ? This course will introduce students to computational linguistic concepts and techniques pertaining to meaning, such as vector space semantics and sentiment analysis. The course combines a theoretical perspective on meaning and computation with hands-on lab work.

In this course, students will develop a computational understanding of text and language. This course is cross-disciplinary, tools and project based; it teams Linguistics and Computer Science students in projects exploring novel applications of Natural Language Processing. Example topics include text summarization, bias detection, and sentiment analysis using Python and text processing and machine learning libraries. Topics and applications will vary by instructor.

This course teaches students advanced skills for engaging with English language linguistics in public settings. Topics may include: how to talk to a general audience about linguistics; navigating common public myths about language; presentation skills to make complex topics accessible; incorporating linguistics in language courses; public outreach and interview skills in linguistics; designing research to answer public questions about English. In this capstone course, students will output innovative projects for educating the public about English language linguistics. This course includes an experiential learning component where students will get hands-on experience talking to various audiences about linguistics.

This course considers the impact on variant use by second language learners exerted by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, such as the surrounding linguistic context, age, sex, style, and curricular and extra-curricular exposure. Implications are drawn for second language teaching, including deciding what registers and variants to teach and what activities to employ.

All languages, in all linguistic domains, exhibit variation - more than one way of saying the same thing. This variation is not random but dependent on various linguistic, social, and cognitive conditioning factors. This course explores the theory and practice of analyzing such sociolinguistic variation. Students will receive hands-on instruction in fieldwork methods for collecting natural speech data and quantitative methods for analyzing patterns in that data.

This course examines current issues of theoretical and/or empirical relevance in linguistics with special reference to phenomena involving language change. Depending on the instructor, the focus of the course may be more oriented towards phonology, morpho-syntax, semantics, or the lexicon. The contact hours for this course may vary in terms of contact type (L, S, T, P) from year to year, but will be between 24-36 contact hours in total. See the UTM Timetable.

An advanced seminar on current issues of theoretical relevance in linguistics with special reference to Creole languages, in particular their emergence and their linguistic properties compared to those of the contributing languages. Depending on the instructor, the course may emphasize on French-based, English-based or Portuguese-based Creoles.

We examine current issues of theoretical and/or empirical relevance in linguistics with special reference to the Romance family, including both well-known and understudied varieties. In this course, student can engage deeply with specific properties of the Romance family from the point of view of micro-comparative analysis, sociolinguistic variation, and/or diachronic change depending on student interests and the expertise of the instructor. The contact hours for this course may vary in terms of contact type (L, S, T, P) from year to year, but will be between 24-36 contact hours in total. See the UTM Timetable.

An advanced seminar that explores topics and issues concerning the Chinese languages. Depending on the instructor, focus of the course may be oriented toward structural properties, language and society, bilingualism, the languages of China, or historical issues.

This course examines cross-linguistic typological features found in the languages of the world. Special attention is given to investigating the remarkable range of phonological, morphological and syntactic diversity found in the world’s languages. One of the primary goals of the course is to examine the notion of language universals in light of such diversity.

An introduction to the structure of a featured language other than English. Topics of analysis may include the phonological, morphological, syntactic, or semantic systems; the writing system; historical aspects; variation. Students will use the tools of linguistic analysis learned in prior courses to examine the structural properties of this language. No prior knowledge of the language is necessary.