LING3004 Senior seminar Dr. Youngah Do Capstone Course. Sem 2, 6 credits Course Description This capstone course is available by invitation to students with outstanding records and/or those considering postgraduate study and research. Participants will read and present primary research literature and debate issues in the field. Prerequisite: LING1000. Note: For General Linguistics majors only. Assessment: 100% coursework.
LING2053 Language and the brain Chun Yin Liu Advanced course. Sem 1, 6 credits Course Description This course is an introduction to the representation and processing of language in the human brain, the systems and processes that enables us to speak, understand speech, learn languages, and read and write. Through attending the course, students will acquire in-depth knowledge of how language is developed, processed, and organized in the brain. Traditional as well as most recent research from linguistics, cognitive neuroscience (e.g. brain imaging) and the study of language disorders will be reviewed. Pre-requisite: LING1000 Assessment: 100% coursework.
Online - all welcome! 8-11 June 2022 : "Population Movements, Language Contact in East Asia and Southeast Asia, and Evolutionary Linguistics" For more information, click here. Co-conveners: Salikoko S. Mufwene, Stephen Matthews, Virginia Yip, and Kofi Yakpo Co-organized by the University of Chicago, University of Hong Kong & Chinese University of Hong Kong
Our MPhil graduate, Mr. Cheung Ching Yat Lewis, has been offered a PhD scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen. He will work with Limor Raviv, an up-and-coming scholar working in the fields of language evolution, cultural evolution and language diversity. Congratulations!
We are happy to announce that Dr. Kofi Yakpo has been invited as a guest professor with the Laboratory of Excellence “Foundations of Language" (Sorbonne & Université Paris Cité, France), and is going to give a series of four seminars on the theme “Multicausal approaches to language contact”. The seminars will take place on June 2, 3, 13 and 14, 2022 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at INALCO, Pôle Langues et Civilizations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins 75013 Paris - Room 5.22. All are welcome in case you are in Paris between 1-15 June 2022! For more information, click here. [...]
LING7014 Language Structure in Context Dr. Kofi Yakpo MA Elective course. Sem 1Thursday, 9:30 am – 12:20 pmVenue: RRST-4.04 Course Description This course introduces students to a specific language or group of languages on which the teacher concerned has conducted linguistic field work, laboratory or theoretical research. Topics cover the main areas of grammar and phonology of the language chosen for the course. The study of linguistic structure may be complemented with aspects of comparative linguistics, areal typology, language contact, socio-cultural, historical and geographical context. Course work may also cover aspects of the collection, analysis and interpretation of qualitative and quantitative [...]
LING2066 Variation Analysis Dr. Jonathan Havenhill Advanced Course. Sem 2 , 6 credits Course Description Language is inherently variable. No two people speak the same way, nor does one person use the same speech patterns in all contexts. This type of variation is not random, but structured, and depends on the identities of the speaker and their audience, the topic of conversation, the speaker’s attitude, and a variety of other social and linguistic factors. This course will introduce students to the field of variationist sociolinguistics, which is concerned with the systematic study of language variation and its relationship to linguistic structure [...]
You can visit here for more information of our MA programme, or here for application. Application deadline: 30 Mar 2021 noon
LING7011 Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics Dr. Thomas van Hoey MA Elective course. Sem 2Tuesday, 3:00 pm – 5:50 pm Venue: ONLINE Course Description This course looks at language as a window into the mind. We want to know how language can be understood as a crossroads or interaction between the world and our minds. Our theme is meaning. Instead of focusing on a single theoretical framework aimed at encapsulating every aspect of language, like Optimality Theory or Generative Grammar, this course focuses on Cognitive Linguistics, a less rigid approach, which allows us to explore the myriad strategies to create and convey [...]
Check out a new paper on second language morphological processing by our HKU linguists (Dr. Song, Dr. Do, Dr. Thompson, and Dr. Waegermaekers)! Full text available here. SECOND LANGUAGE USERS EXHIBIT SHALLOW MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSING Abstract The present study tests the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH), which claims that compared to L1 processing, L2 language processing generally underuses grammatical information, prioritizing nongrammatical information. Specifically, this cross-modal priming study tests SSH at the level of morphology, investigating whether late advanced L2 learners construct hierarchically structured representations for trimorphemic derived words during real-time processing as native speakers do. Our results support SSH. In lexical decision [...]
Come join us!! Assoc/Full Professor Position in Language Diversity and Documentation at HKU! Applications are due soon: 13 June 2020. See the link for details. https://jobs.hku.hk/en/job/500057/professorassociate-professor-in-language-diversity-and-documentation
LING2075 Issues in language documentation Dr. Joseph Perry Advanced course. Sem 1, 6 credits Course Description This course will introduce various practical, philosophical and ethical issues involved in language documentation. Topics to be covered include: the goals of language documentation and revitalisation, ethical and practical issues of working with speakers, the social responsibilities of linguists in the field, methods for recording and annotating audiovisual data, working with specialist software aimed at field linguists (including, but not limited to, FLEx and ELAN), and metadata/archiving standards for documentary materials. Some basic background in morphology, syntax and phonetics is desirable. Pre-requisite: LING1000 and LING2004 [...]
LING2074 Introduction to second language research Dr. Yoonsang Song Advanced course. Sem 2, 6 credits Course Description This course provides a general introduction to research in second language acquisition (SLA). The goal is to introduce students to important findings from SLA research and a range of contemporary approaches to SLA research. This course involves an independent research project and an in-class lecture component. Pre-requisite: LING1000, LING2004 and LING2050 Assessment: 100% coursework
LING2073 Advanced topics in syntax Dr. Cathryn Donohue Advanced course. Sem 2, 6 credits Course Description In this course, students will learn techniques and strategies for understanding, modeling and explaining syntactic phenomena. Students will be exposed to theoretical models and develop their skills in analysis and argumentation. These skills are necessary for the development of linguistic theory and ultimately to our knowledge of the world's languages. The course consists primarily of lectures and tutorials, with assignments to solidify the students' understanding of the material and a report of an original piece of research. Pre-requisite: LING1000, LING2032 and LING2050 Assessment: 100% coursework
LING2071 Introductory statistics for the humanities Dr. Christophe Coupé Advanced course. Sem 1, 6 credits Course Description Quantitative studies are growing more and more common in the humanities, and a knowledge of statistics is quickly becoming a valuable asset to follow and conduct research in fields such as linguistics, history or literature. This course aims to equip students with a solid understanding of fundamental concepts and tools in statistics, so they can better approach statistical analyses in research studies and conduct their own research with common basic statistical tools. Flipped classroom will be used for most of the lectures to allow [...]
Dr. Christophe Coupe has recently published a paper titled "Different languages, similar encoding efficiency: comparable information rates across the human communicative niche" in Science Advances (https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw2594). His findings have been reported by several media including Mingpao, Economist, and Science Daily. Find out more about his work at https://www.hku.hk/press/news_detail_20079.html, https://www.miragenews.com/hku-led-study-tracks-17-languages-and-finds-all-languages-convey-information/
Experiential learning classes in Archaeology open to all Faculty of Arts students! For more information, please follow this link.
LING6032 Semantics Dr. Leo Hoye MA Elective course. Sem 1Thursday, 9:30 am – 12:20 pm Venue: RRST-7.48 Course Description This course introduces students to the linguistic study of meaning. It focuses on the meaning of signs and the relation between signifiers and what they stand for. Topics to be examined include both traditional and current approaches to lexical and sentence meaning. The role of semantics in the language system will be addressed. Central problems and theoretical concepts of Semantics will be discussed, with illustration from a variety of languages. Course Details Assessment:100% coursework
