Raffaella Zanuttini

Courses

Term: Fall 2022

Ling 253/653 - Syntax I

If you knew all the words of a language, would you be able to speak that language? No, because you’d still need to know how to put the words together to form all and only the grammatical sentences of that language. This course focuses on the principles of our mental grammar that determine how words are put together to form sentences. Some of these principles are shared by all languages, some differ from language to language. The interplay of the principles that are shared and those that are distinct allows us to understand how languages can be very similar and yet also very different at the same time. This course is mainly an introduction to syntactic theory: it introduces the questions that the field asks, the methodology it employs, some of the main generalizations that have been drawn and results that have been achieved. Secondarily, this course is also an introduction to scientific theorizing: what it means to construct a scientific theory, how to test it, and how to choose among competing theories.

This course can be applied towards the Social Sciences Yale College distributional requirement.

Term: Fall 2022
Day/Time: MW 11:35am-12:50pm

Ling 490 - Research Methods in Linguistics

Development of skills in linguistics research, writing, and presentation. Choosing a research area, identifying good research questions, developing hypotheses, and presenting ideas clearly and effectively, both orally and in writing; methodological issues; the balance between building on existing literature and making a novel contribution. Prepares for the writing of the senior essay. 

Term: Fall 2022
Day/Time: W 4pm-5:50pm
Term: Spring 2023

Ling 211 - Grammatical Diversity in U.S. English

Language as a system of mental rules, governing the sound, form, and meaning system. The (impossible) distinction between language and dialect. The scientific study of standard and non-standard varieties. Social attitudes toward prestige and other varieties; linguistic prejudice. Focus on morpho-syntactic variation in North-American English: alternative passives (“The car needs washed”), personal datives (“I need me a new printer”), negative inversion (“Don’t nobody want to ride the bus”), “drama SO” (“I am SO not going to study tonight”). 

This course can be applied towards the Social Sciences Yale College distributional requirement. 
Term: Spring 2023
Day/Time: MW 11:35am-12:50pm