Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics 

Lev Blumenfeld  

This course offers an overview of the basic tools, methods, and results of the study of language change. We will start by surveying evidence for language change in all domains -- sound, word structure, and sentence structure -- both over the long-term, and as change in progress. Next we will turn to the methods of establishing language relatedness and reconstructing proto-languages, relying on material both from Indo-European and other language groups. Finally, we will briefly touch on the importance of studying language change for synchronic and theoretical linguistics.

Language Documentation

Katherine Hodgson & Amrik Mirzayan  

Language documentation concerns the systematic production of long-lasting records of the speech practices (i.e., languages and dialects) of a specific community. In this course we will focus on a few of the practical aspects of language documentation, with special attention to data collection, transcription, annotation, and documentation of language-in-use. The specific language area focus of our course will be modern Armenian languages and dialects. However, the skills you develop in this class can be extended to your future fieldwork and/or language documentation in any area of the world.

Through this course students will (1) gain a basic understanding of the current practices in digital language documentation, (2) develop skills in transcription and annotation essential in documentation of regional linguistic/dialectal variation, (3) become familiar with some of the tools used in fieldwork, and (4) practice analyzing phonetic aspects of speech variation through acoustic analysis. By the end of the course, I hope that we will all be better prepared in conducting future language documentation projects which focus on data collection, linguistic transcription/annotation, acoustic-phonetic analyses, and presentation of research results to different audiences.

Binding Theory

Hamida Demirdache & Maia Duguine  

Binding Theory seeks to characterize the internalized, tacit, knowledge that speakers have about when any two nominal expressions in a sentence can be understood as having the same referent, that is, as designating the same individual (in some internal domain D of mental entities).

This course presents classic Binding Theory and the conceptual and empirical challenges it raises. The core syntactic and semantic notions at the heart of Binding Theory will be introduced from scratch and step by step: c-command (the syntactic definition of semantic scope), syntactic vs. semantic binding, coreference and bound variable anaphora.

Classic Binding Theory classifies nominals according to their referential status. Pronouns (e.g. I or she) and anaphors (e.g. myself or herself) are nominals whose reference changes across contexts. Their interpretation is/can be dependent on another expression (‘antecedent’) introduced in the sentence, and as such can co-vary with the choice of value for the antecedent. In contrast, referential expressions (R-expressions for short) are nominals (e.g. Noam Chomsky) whose reference typically does not vary across contexts, and that do not allow dependent or covarying interpretations.

The focus of this course will be on the principle of Binding Theory –so-called Condition C– which precludes an R-expression from being referentially dependent on another expression under certain well-defined syntactic configurations. We highlight the empirical shortcomings raised by Condition C by investigating the conditions under which certain R-expressions can systematically escape Condition C and even allow the covarying interpretations that pronouns allow. We argue for a universalist approach to Binding, where the morphosyntax and semantic person/φ-feature specification of nominals (across languages) determines the range of possible referential dependencies they can enter into, without needing to appeal to dedicated binding principles.

Introduction to pragmatics

Sophia A. Malamud

Assuming that semantic theory gives us a basic understanding of the literal meaning of sentences, what phenomena are still to be accounted for in the explication of language meaning? The class explores topics in language use in context, starting with the notion of implicature, and expanding to speech acts, finally looking at models of common ground and pragmatics of dialogue.

Problems of Reference

Louis DeRosset

We have an astounding ability to talk about a wide range of things.  Several important disputes in philosophy turn on the proper way to account for this phenomenon, which philosophers call reference.  We will examine some of the more prominent theories of reference, explaining the problems attaching to each. 

Liberalism and Its Critics

Jon Mahoney

Overview: This mini-course will examine some central ideas from classical and contemporary liberal political philosophy followed by recent criticisms of the liberal tradition.  Regarding liberalism we will consider the problem of political authority (i.e., what justifies the coercive authority of government?), liberty, and equality.  After that we will consider illiberalism and authoritarian populism. The course will conclude with a module on democratic socialism.

• Day 1: John Locke on political authority and natural rights.  The main topics will include Locke’s claim that legitimate political authority arises from consent by persons who have natural rights to life, liberty and property.  Reading: Locke’s Second Treatise (a selection).

• Day 2: John Stuart Mill on liberty and its limits.  The main topic will be on Mill’s “liberty principle” and its implications for freedom of expression and religious freedom.  We will also consider Mill’s anti-paternalism and his position on why and when government can limit liberty through force. Reading: Mill’s On Liberty (a selection).

• Day 3: John Rawls and justice as fairness.  For this module we will consider Rawls’ defense of egalitarian liberalism.  Rawls claims a just society will have a basic structure (e.g., law, economy, family) that reflects two principles of justice, one that prioritizes liberty, another that prioritizes fair equality of opportunity. Reading: Rawls’ Theory of Justice (a selection).

• Day 4: Illiberalism and authoritarian populism.  We will examine two authors who examine the recent rise of illiberalism, Marlene Laurelle and Timothy Snyder.  Each offers a framework for understanding ways that authoritarian populism poses a threat to liberty and equality.  Readings: Laurelle, “Illiberalism: A Conceptual Introduction”; Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom (a selection).

• Day 5: Democratic socialism.  Thomas Piketty proposes an alternative to economic liberalism which draws historical lessons from egalitarian thought.  Elizabeth Anderson argues that the liberal tradition has been “hijacked” by those who favor a one-sided conception of liberalism that favors markets at the expense of equality.  For this module we will consider several of their proposals on how to best defend an egalitarian politics.  Readings: Thomas Piketty, A Brief History of Equality (a selection); Elizabeth Anderson, Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic Against Workers And How Workers Can Take it Back (a selection). 

Formal Epistemology

Tamaz Tokhadze

This course will cover some of the key topics in formal epistemology – an active and dynamic area of philosophy that employs formal tools from logic and mathematics to study epistemological questions. In addition to exploring contemporary debates in epistemology, participants will acquire basic formal tools from logic, probability theory, and Bayesian network theory, which can be applied to various epistemological topics and beyond.

The topics covered in this course are:

1. Rational Belief: Logical and evidential norms on belief.

2. Rational Confidence (Credence): Probabilistic and evidential norms on credences.

3. The Relationship Between Belief and Credence: How should beliefs and credences interact?

4. Objective vs. Subjective Bayesianism: Confirmation and Induction.

5. Disagreement and Rationality: What is the rational doxastic response to disagreement with well-informed peers?

Human Rights: Philosophical and Historical Foundations

Armen T. Marsoobian

The course will explore the philosophical origins of the concept of human rights as it is conceived today in the modern human rights environment, including its incorporation into international human rights and humanitarian law. These origins will be first explored in an overview of important thinkers from the Enlightenment. The major ethical theories will be summarized and critiques of them explored. Important documents in the development of human rights law will be examined along with the historical moments that led to their creation. Concepts central to human rights such as autonomy, dignity, and agency will be explored. We will also explore connections and tensions between individual and group rights. We will conclude with philosophical examinations of the human rights crime of genocide.

Deontological Ethics

Arshak Balayan

This course explores some aspects of deontological ethics.  The course starts with the analysis of Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy but focuses mostly on contemporary debates within deontological ethics.  In this crash course we will discuss some issues related to the content of deontology, such as the following:  What is a moral duty?  What moral principles ought we follow?  What exactly is a universal law?  Is deontological ethics applicable to real life issues?   We will also discuss challenges to deontological ethics such as the paradox of deontology, conflict of deontological duties and arguments from moral psychology. 

Introduction to semantics

Daniel Altshuler

This course introduces students to the scientific study of meaning in natural language. We will explore how meaning is tied to truth, how to systematically represent meaning using tools like propositional logic and set theory, and how to distinguish between literal meaning (entailments) and implicit meaning (implicatures and presuppositions). By the end of the week, you’ll be able to analyze semantic properties of sentences, understand the structure of quantification and negation, and apply core diagnostics to inferential meaning. No prior experience with formal semantics is required.

Negation, monotonicity, and scales in semantics and pragmatics

Lisa Hoffman

This course builds on the foundations of formal semantics and explores how meaning is shaped by logical structure and context in subtle ways: We’ll analyze how negation, quantifiers, and scalar reasoning interact, explore cross-linguistic variation, and critically examine when logic does — and does not — match up with natural language. We will focus on two particularly rich and revealing areas of natural language: negative polarity items (NPIs)—expressions like “any” or “ever” that only appear in certain grammatical environments, typically under negation—and scalar implicatures, inferences that arise when a speaker chooses a weaker expression like “some” instead of a stronger one like “all”. Why can we say “I don’t have any money” but not “I have any money”? Why does “Some students passed” often suggest that not all did? We’ll use tools from semantics and pragmatics to investigate these patterns in English and other languages. If you’re curious about the boundaries between literal meaning and conversational implication, this class is for you.