Fall 2025 undergraduate courses

For a full list of undergraduate courses in linguistics offered in recent years, see: CAS – Linguistics Courses.

Say What? Accents, Dialects, and Society

CAS LX 110

Exploration of how variation in accents and dialects interacts with various aspects of society and human life. Students examine how dialect variation arises, how it can be described, and how it interacts with literature, film, humor, and music. Cannot be taken for credit by students who have previously taken, or are currently taking, CAS LX 250 or a higher-level linguistics course. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.

BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry I, The Individual in Community, Research and Information Literacy.

Introduction to Linguistics

CAS LX 250 / MET LX 250

Properties that languages share and how languages differ with respect to structure (sound system, word formation, syntax), expression of meaning, acquisition, variation, and change; cultural and artistic uses of language; comparison of oral, written, and signed languages. Also offered through Metropolitan College as MET LX 250. (Students must also register for a discussion section.)

BU Hub areas: Scientific Inquiry I, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.

Phonetics & Phonology: Introduction to Sound Systems

CAS LX 301

Introduction to the nature and patterning of sounds in human language. Presents articulatory and acoustic phonetics, and basic phonological analysis, focusing on cross-language typology and comparison. Hands-on development of practical skills, including IPA transcription, field techniques, and digital speech analysis. (Students must also register for a discussion section LX302.)

Prerequisite: CAS LX 250, or consent of instructor.

BU Hub areas: Scientific Inquiry II, Quantitative Reasoning I, Critical Thinking.

Semantics & Pragmatics: Introduction to Linguistic Meaning

CAS LX 331

Systematic examination of how meaning is encoded in words and sentences, and how it can emerge from the complexity of the grammar. Also touches on various aspects of pragmatics–the study of how meaning is shaped by context. Students must also register for a discussion section.

Prerequisite: CAS LX 250, or consent of instructor.

BU Hub areas: The Individual in Community, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking

Variations in Dialects of English

CAS LX 365

Exploration of how dialects of English differ from each other, focusing on grammatical variation in the US, with occasional forays into other dialects. Students come to appreciate how linguists investigate grammatical diversity scientifically, revealing the complex structure of non-standard dialects.

Prerequisites: (CASLX250) or consent of instructor.

The Structure of Spanish

CAS LX 384

Introduction to Spanish morphology and syntax. Explores the structure of Spanish words, phrases, and sentences from multiple perspectives with a focus on natural language data. Examines Generative, Usage-based, and Lexical-Functional approaches to the analysis of grammatical structure. Conducted in Spanish. Also offered as CAS LS 508 and GRS LX 684.

Prerequisites: (CASLX250) and one LS 300-level language course; or consent of instructor.

Topics in Linguistics: Child Language Acquisition

CAS LX 390 A1

Prerequisite: CAS LX 250, or consent of instructor.

Topics in Linguistics: Cognitive Science of Language

CAS LX 390 B1

This course serves as an introduction to studying language as a part of broader cognitive science, exploring questions about the nature of linguistic representations, how they are processed and acquired, and how they interact with other cognitive domains.

Prerequisite: CAS LX 250, or consent of instructor

Topics in Linguistics: Contemporary Research in Neural Network Models of Language

CAS LX 390 C1

This seminar will discuss contemporary research in computational linguistics and cognitive science, focusing on neural network models. We aim to survey new research directions enabled by recent technological advances, contra things possible e.g., in the second wave of connectionism.

Prerequisites: LX 496/796 or CS 505, or consent of instructor

Linguistic Field Methods

CAS LX 391

A team-based in-depth investigation of the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and lexicon of an African or other non-Indo-European language. Bi-weekly sessions with language consultant. Weekly trainings on methodology, ethics, analysis, and presentation of results.

BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration.

Prerequisites: (CASLX250) or consent of instructor. –

Introduction to Programming for Computational Linguistics

CAS LX 394

Introduction to computational techniques to explore linguistic models and test empirical claims. Serves as an introduction to programming, algorithms, and data structures, focused on modern applications to Natural Language Processing (NLP). Topics include tagging and classification, parsing models, meaning representation, and information extraction. (Not intended for students with a background in programming or computer science.) Carries MCS divisional studies credit in CAS.

BU Hub areas: Quantitative Reasoning II, Research and Information Literacy.

Intermediate Syntax: Modeling Syntactic Knowledge

CAS LX 422

Using linguistic data drawn from a wide variety of languages, students develop a precise model of syntactic knowledge through evaluation of hypotheses and arguments. Exploration of major discoveries and phenomena from the linguistic literature.

Prerequisite: CAS LX 321, or consent of instructor.