Undergraduate Courses

List of courses offered by the Linguistics Department.

To see if a class meets in the current quarter, as well as the time and location, go to the Linguistics Department’s Course Schedule page.

Courses usually offered every quarter are Linguistics 1, 20, 102 or 103, 119A or 120A, 120B. Most other courses may be offered one or two quarters. An internal tentative Linguistics course offerings list for the following academic year is made available at the end of May or early June of the preceding academic year.

Frequently Asked Questions:

How big are UCLA Linguistics courses?
The majority of required linguistics courses for the majors are capped at 40 students per lecture, with the exception of Linguistics 1, 20, 102, 119A, and 120B.
Who do I contact for assistance with course planning?
Please refer to the Undergraduate Student Affairs Officer for guidance with course planning for the major.
Can I take major requirements as pass/no pass?
Only foreign language requirements may be taken for Pass/No Pass grading. All other preparation for the major and upper-division major requirements must be taken for a letter grade. *Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, exceptions have been made to this policy. Please visit the majors/minor page to view the memos outlining these exceptions.
Can I take preparation for the major requirements at a community college or other university?
Yes, however, you must first consult with the Undergraduate Student Affairs Officer if you plan to take courses at another college or university for approval and confirmation.
I completed a course for my major, but it does not appear on my degree audit report. What do I do?
Please send an email to the Undergraduate Student Affairs Officer to address this inquiry. Include your university ID number and the course information in the email.

Winter 2021

  • ASL 2 - Elementary American Sign Language

    Instructor(s): Benjamin Lewis

    Lecture, five hours. Enforced requisite: course 1. Introduction to fundamentals of American sign language. P/NP or letter grading.

  • ASL 5 - Intermediate American Sign Language

    Instructor(s): Benjamin Lewis

    Lecture, five hours. Enforced requisite: course 4. Intermediate American sign language. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 1 - Introduction to Study of Language

    Instructor(s): Dominique Sportiche, Phillip Barnett, Anissa Gladney, Stephen Lehman, Matthew Czuba, Gabriel Teixeira, Teigo Onishi, Huilei Wang, Elizabeth Sola-llonch

    Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Summary for general undergraduates of what is known about human language; biological basis of language, scientific study of language and human cognition; uniqueness of human language, its structure, universality, its diversity; language in social and cultural setting; language in relation to other aspects of human inquiry and knowledge. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 20 - Introduction to Linguistic Analysis

    Instructor(s): Ethan Poole, Adam Royer, Bethany Sturman, Valentina Lunardi

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Introduction to theory and methods of linguistics: universal properties of human language; phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic structures and analysis; nature and form of grammar. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 40W - Language and Gender: Introduction to Gender and Stereotypes

    Instructor(s): Daria Bahtina, Maura O'leary, Kerrianne Devlin

    (Formerly numbered Applied Linguistics 40W.) Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours. Enforced requisite: English Composition 3. Prior knowledge of foreign languages not required. Introduction to language from sociological perspective of gender. Use of research and examples in English and other languages to explore nature of male and female genderlects and gendered language, as reflected in lexicon, language behavior, phonetics and intonation, and language acquisition and linguistic change. Satisfies Writing II requirement. Letter grading.

  • LING 102 - Introduction to Applied Phonetics

    Instructor(s): Elise Bell, Adeline Tan, Jake Aziz

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisite: course 20 with grade of B- or better. Not open for credit to students with credit for course 103. Basics of articulation and acoustics of phonetic categories used in world's languages, including English in comparison with other languages. Practice in speech-sound perception and transcription using International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Applications to language learning/teaching and other fields. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 103 - Introduction to General Phonetics

    Instructor(s): Elise Bell, Noah Elkins

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Enforced requisite: course 20 with grade of B- or better. Not open for credit to students with credit for course 102. Phonetics of variety of languages and phonetic phenomena that occur in languages of world. Extensive practice in perception and production of such phenomena. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 104 - Experimental Phonetics

    Instructor(s): Sun-ah Jun, Hironori Katsuda

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisite: course 102 or 103. Survey of principal techniques of experimental phonetics. Use of laboratory equipment for recording and measuring phonetic phenomena. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 110 - Introduction to Historical Linguistics

    Instructor(s): David Goldstein, John Clayton

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisites: courses 20, 102 or 103, 119A or 120A. Methods and theories appropriate to historical study of language, such as comparative method and method of internal reconstruction. Sound change, grammatical change, semantic change. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 110G - Introduction to Historical Linguistics for Graduate Students

    Instructor(s): David Goldstein

    Lecture, four hours. Limited to and designed for entering linguistics graduate students to help remedy entrance deficiencies in historical linguistics. Basic historical linguistics: methods and theories appropriate to historical study of language, such as comparative methods and method of internal reconstruction. Sound change, grammatical change, semantic change. S/U grading.

  • LING 115 - Linguistics and Speech Pathology

    Instructor(s): Megha Sundara, Jinyoung Jo

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisite: course 102 or 103. Introduction to field of speech pathology. Topics include biological foundations of speech, language, and hearing; and disorders of speech production, language, voice, and hearing, affecting children and adults. In-class presentation and final term paper required if taken for 4 units. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING M116 - Introduction to Japanese Linguistics

    Instructor(s): Shoichi Iwasaki

    (Same as Japanese M120.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: Japanese 3 or 8 or Japanese placement test. Introduction to Japanese grammar and sociolinguistics through reading, discussion, and problem solving in phonology, syntax, semantics, and discourse pragmatics. Letter grading.

  • LING 120A - Phonology I

    Instructor(s): Bruce Hayes, Zhenglong Zhou

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisites: courses 20, 103. Introduction to phonological theory and analysis. Rules, representations, underlying forms, derivations. Justification of phonological analyses. Emphasis on practical skills with problem sets. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 120B - Syntax I

    Instructor(s): Nicoletta Loccioni, Madeleine Booth, Colin Brown, Travis Major

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisite: course 20 with grade of B- or better. Course 120A is not requisite to 120B. Descriptive analysis of morphological and syntactic structures in natural languages; emphasis on insight into nature of such structures rather than linguistics formalization. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 120C - Semantics I

    Instructor(s): Giuseppina Silvestri, Thomas Motter

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisite: course 119B or 120B. Survey of most important theoretical and descriptive claims about nature of meaning. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 127 - Syntactic Typology and Universals

    Instructor(s): Giuseppina Silvestri, Minqi Liu

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisite: course 20. Study of essential similarities and differences among languages in grammatical devices they use to signal the following kinds of concepts: relations between nouns and verbs (case and word order), negation, comparison, existence/location/possession, causation, interrogation, reflexivization, relativization, attribution (adjectives), time (tense and aspect), and backgrounding (subordination). Data from a range of languages presented and analyzed. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 130 - Language Development

    Instructor(s): Nicoletta Loccioni, Ekaterina Khlystova

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisites: courses 20, 119A or 120A, 119B or 120B. Survey of research and theoretical perspectives in language development in children. Discussion and examination of child language data from English and other languages. Emphasis on universals of language development. Topics include infant speech perception and production, development of phonology, morphology, syntax, and word meaning. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING M141 - Current Methods of Language Teaching

    Instructor(s): Jeremy Kelley

    (Same as English Composition M141.) Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: course 20. Survey of theory and practice in teaching second languages, including (1) past and present methods used to teach second languages, (2) current theory and practice underlying skills-based instruction and integrated approaches, and (3) factors that affect second language acquisition and learning. Development of knowledge base in and rational base for design, development, implementation, and evaluation of second language instruction programs. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 165A - Phonology II

    Instructor(s): Kie Zuraw, Zhongshi Xu

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisite: course 120A. To be taken in term following completion of course 120A or as soon as possible thereafter. Further study in phonological theory and analysis: autosegmental theory, syllable structure, metrical theory, interface of phonology and grammar. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 165B - Syntax II

    Instructor(s): Nicholas Baier, Carson Schutze, Thomas Trigg

    Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisite: course 120B. To be taken in term following completion of course 120B or as soon as possible thereafter. Recommended for students who plan to do graduate work in linguistics. Form of grammars, word formation, formal and substantive universals in syntax, relation between syntax and semantics. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 185A - Computational Linguistics I

    Instructor(s): Timothy Hunter, Yang Wang

    Lecture, four hours; laboratory, one hour. Requisites: courses 120B, Program in Computing 10C (or Computer Science 32). Recommended: course 165B or 200B. Overview of formal computational ideas underlying kinds of grammars used in theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics, and some connections to applications in natural language processing. Topics include recursion, relationship between probabilities and grammars, and parsing algorithms. P/NP or letter grading.

  • LING 189HC - Honors Contracts

    Instructor(s): Nicoletta Loccioni

    Tutorial, three hours. Limited to students in College Honors Program. Designed as adjunct to upper-division lecture course. Individual study with lecture course instructor to explore topics in greater depth through supplemental readings, papers, or other activities. May be repeated for maximum of 4 units. Individual honors contract required. Honors content noted on transcript. Letter grading.

  • LING 194 - Research Group Seminars: Laboratory Research in Linguistics

    Instructor(s): Jessica Rett

    Seminar, one hour; laboratory, three to six hours. Students actively participate in experimental, computational, or fieldwork linguistics research, and have opportunity to learn variety of research methods in laboratory or other collaborative environment. Students may be involved in various kinds of research methods, including administering experiments, data analysis, and/or participating in corpus annotation. Students are expected to attend regular laboratory meetings, if offered. Consult professor in charge to enroll. May be repeated for credit. Individual contract required. P/NP grading.

  • SWAHILI 2 - Elementary Swahili

    Instructor(s): Sephrine Achesah

    Lecture, five hours. Enforced requisite: course 1. Major language of East Africa, particularly Tanzania. P/NP or letter grading.