The Undergraduate LINGUISTICS PROGRAM
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Director, Professor Esther Torrego Esther.torrego@umb.edu
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Since 1957, the field of
linguistics has developed from a social science into a cognitive science. Nowadays,
linguists view languages as mental systems that grow in children when exposed
to languages. A child exposed to a language acquires that language. For
example, a Vietnamese baby will acquire Vietnamese, a French baby will
acquire French and so forth. Linguists study language as an internal
component of the mind/brain, seeking to understand the principles of the
mental grammar. Because language is studied at UMass/Boston from a variety of
perspectives, some of them cultural, some of them cognitive, the Program offers
one specific course which deals directly with the cognitive approach to
language: Ling 310, Transformational Syntax: An Introduction to
Chomskyian Linguistics. The Undergraduate
Linguistics Program at UMass/Boston is an interdisciplinary program involving
several different departments and programs, both in the Humanities and in the
Sciences. |
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