CMN 401 ISSUES IN LANGUAGE AND COGNITION

Fall-Winter-Spring 2008/09
FALL ISSUE: BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE
Professor: Janet Pierrehumbert (jbp@northwestern.edu)
Mondays 4:00 PM Frances Searle 1-421, additional meetings TBA

COURSE DESCRIPTION

In this course, students will assume an active role in the Language and Cognition Colloquium series. During fall quarter, we will coordinate with the One Book One Northwestern Program (The Reluctant Mr. Darwin) with a series on the biology and evolution of language. The themes for winter and spring quarters will be developed with the participation of the students.

The students enrolled for each quarter will arrange a series of talks by local and out-of-town speakers. They will also read papers related to the talks and meet with the speakers. In lieu of writing a term paper, the students each quarter will distill central ideas of broad interest and make them available to the public as Wikipedia articles, shareware libraries, demonstrations on YouTube, or other web media. All students are expected to attend the full year interdisciplinary colloquium series (three talks per quarter), but they are responsible for reading and postings only in the quarter in which they enroll.

PROJECTS

The students will work together on the team project for the quarter in which they are enrolled. The form of this project will be decided on as a group as a function of the expertise of the students enrolled and the thematic emphasis of the quarter.

LANGUAGE AND COGNITION

Language and Cognition is one of Northwestern's oldest interdisciplinary
programs. Further information about the program may be found at:
http://www.linguistics.northwestern.edu/programs/gradinter3.html

A backlist of previous colloquia, on topics ranging from game theory to
bilingualism, may be viewed at:
http://www.linguistics.northwestern.edu/programs/L_and_C_backlist.html

PREREQUISITES

This course is open to interested graduate students from any department. Advanced undergraduates may also enroll with permission of the instructor.

Students intending to enroll for any quarter should contact the professor by email (jbp@northwestern.edu) and preferably attend the organizational meeting on Monday Sept. 29 at 4:00 PM in Frances Searle 1-421.

TEACHING METHOD: Colloquia and team group meetings.

EVALUATION: Evaluation will be based on contributions to the team effort.