I saw the man with the telescope, but who had the telescope? Ambiguities like this are ubiquitous in languages. In this two-hour workshop, we’ll first approach the phenomenon from a linguist’s perspective, exploring how sentence structures can be used to explain such ambiguities. In the second part, we’ll see how machines try to resolve them, using real datasets and hands-on coding activities. By the end, you’ll understand why ambiguity challenges both humans and computers, and why studying it reveals so much about the hidden structure of language and the limits of artificial intelligence.

Why does your coffee cool down? Why does the smell of pizza spread through a room? And how can a factory make thousands of candy bars every minute without running out of ingredients? These simple questions hide the same ideas that chemical engineers use when they design real processes: keeping track of what flows in and out, measuring how heat builds up or disappears, and figuring out how quickly heat can move through a system. In this session we’ll start with familiar, everyday examples and build up to the challenge of designing a chemical reactor, where all three ideas meet. By the end, you’ll see how chemical engineering connects the small things you notice at home with the big systems that power modern life.

Human languages are more complex than most people think. What do you actually know when you speak/sign a language? Do you have a memorized list of words/phrases in your mind, or do you have some type of computational system of mental rules? What can studying language scientifically tell us about the human mind? This class will serve as a crash-course introduction to central questions in the field of linguistics and to the scientific methods that linguists use. In this class, you will learn about the various aspects of language that linguists study — sentence structure, sound formation, meaning, and more — and think through some puzzling aspects of language you may have never thought about before. Together, we will see firsthand how intricate, beautiful, and diverse human language is!

We use language in creative ways to play, joke, and generally express ourselves all the time. In an era where we are increasingly surrounded by AI generated speech, this ability to create and to play remains distinctly human. But what actually makes a lyric catchy or a poem sound poetic? From haiku to hip hop, we know a poem when we hear or read one. How do we know? This course will attempt to answer this question by exploring the linguistic underpinnings of poetry and verse. Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguists want to understand all of the complex things we know (even if we don’t know we know them) when we know a language. In a poem or a song, sound and meaning are skillfully manipulated and arranged in order to create a wide range of effects. Complex meanings and intense feelings can be conjured in just a few words or lines. This is an incredible cognitive feat when you stop and think about it. In this course, through exploring poetry and lyrics across a variety of languages, we will think critically about processes like rhyme and word play. We will investigate what these properties of poetry can teach us about how our linguistic system works, and how it allows us to produce and interpret sound and meaning.

What is the difference between sound and noise? What about speech? Phonetics, a sub field of linguistics, is the scientific study of sound as applied to human language. Every time you say something, you are coordinating a very complex series of physical movements from your diaphragm all the way to the tip of your tongue and lips. These movements result in audible sounds that we can then interpret with incredible accuracy, all without thinking. By studying these sounds we can learn a lot about how language works, from physiology to perception. This is the work of the phonetician. In this class we will use the tools of phonetic analysis, namely sound waves and special diagrams called spectrograms, to think critically about the following question: By looking into the waves of our own speech, what can we learn about our language(s) and about human language in general?

Ever wondered how many languages there are in the world (and why Google won’t give you a direct answer)? Dive into the fascinating world of linguistics, the scientific study of language, in this fun and interactive course! We'll go beyond "grammar rules" to explore the science behind how we talk and make meaning. Learn to analyze your own speech and languages around the world through puzzles and games based on real-life examples. Uncover what you know when you know a language. By the end of this course, you’ll have a sense of how to crack the code of language using he linguistic tools of morphology (word structure), syntax (sentence structure), and phonology (sound structure). Get ready to be amazed by human language!

Did you know that language, like all natural phenomena, can be observed and investigated in a scientific way? What is unique about language is that everyone has their own personal and infinite data set living inside their brain. Learn to examine that data the way a linguist would, and puzzle over things that you may not realize you know about the language that you use every day. Learn how linguistics, the science of language, relates to your world and what you're interested in.