Grader, LING150, Language and the World

All human communities have language -and our language is central to our lives. We use language not only to communicate with each other, we use to in our dreams, in our art, and some have even argued that language is the stuff of thought itself. This Gen-Ed course introduces concepts and methods in linguistics -the scientific study of language -along with important concepts and tools from psychology, anthropology, biology, computation, and philosophy.

As part of course requirements, students take on the role of linguists studying a constructed language that they must imagine and create. Every week, they work on different linguistic levels of their language. As part of their final presentaiton, students present a conference submission on their conlang and introduce it to their peers.