(Cross listed LINGST 4630/7630)

How do you know that “deg” and “ged” are possible, though not real, English words while “gde” could not possibly be a word in English. Since “gde” is a word in Russian, it’s not because the human mouth is incapable of pronouncing “gde.” Rather it is related to a property of the English sound system. In this course, we will explore such sound patterns in English and in other languages. We will investigate the rules that languages use to organize their sounds, and we’ll see that such rules can actually affect how people hear around the world. We will also study some of the theories and methods that linguists use for studying sound patterns. It is strongly recommended that students have completed at least one introductory course in linguistics (e.g. English 1060, 4600).