Introduction to Linguistic Typology

This course covers the foundations of the linguistic subfield concerned with comparing and classifying world languages. The course provides an overview of the analytic tools which may be used to identify and classify a language based on its phonological, morphological, and syntactic properties, and explores the major ways in which languages may be similar or different in these domains. Students will acquire a useful toolkit for studying novel, unusual, and typologically diverse linguistic data, and for conducting fieldwork on understudied languages. Prerequisites: Linguist 110, 121A, 121B, 130A, 130B, or permission of the instructor.