The meaning of words and sentences is often determined by the context, for instance in irony. How do listeners understand us if we don‘t always say what we mean? What do conversations in different cultures and languages have in common? In this course we will examine language in interaction from different perspectives. Key concepts in linguistic pragmatics will be introduced, including the contribution of context to meaning. The methodology and key topics of conversation analysis will be described along with recent comparative studies on language in interaction around the world. We will also briefly discuss interdisciplinary psycholinguistic research on pragmatics. Students will get hands-on experience with recording conversations, the conceptual analysis of talk, and use of relevant software (including Praat for analyzing and processing sound files and ELAN for annotation of conversation).

This is a joint course for students in Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics. It falls into two parts. On the one hand, in Thursday classes, the students receive training in critical thinking, scientific methods and academic writing. Topics include the use of handbooks and other sources, the style and structure of academic papers, research methods in linguistics and literature, conventions regarding citations and bibliographies, etc.

In the second part of the course, taught on Tuesdays, the students are introduced to the various sub-disciplines of Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics as academic subjects and their connection to other subject areas. Different teachers and other guests introduce their sub-disciplines and areas of specialization.

The course gives an introduction to linguistics and methods of linguistic analyses. The goal is to acquaint students with the nature of human languages and the main features of Icelandic grammar. 

The major aspects of the history of linguistics traced from the antiquity through the middle ages till the beginning of the 19th Century. The Old Icelandic grammatical treatises. The major aspects of the history of linguistics in the 19th and 20th century. Emphasis is placed on the theories and discoveries that have been most influential in the development of ideas and methods in linguistics.

An introductory course in Icelandic phonetics, phonology, and morphology. The basics of acoustic phonetics and Icelandic articulatory phonetics will be introduced, accompanied by training in phonetic transcription. The main concepts of phonology will be presented, followed by an overview of sound alternations in Icelandic and their conditions. Basic concepts in morphology will be presented and the main word formation processes in Icelandic and their productivity will be dealt with. Grammatical categories in Icelandic will be outlined, the inflection of the main parts of speech will be described, and an overview given of inflectional classes and variations.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

This course covers the basic issues in Icelandic syntax, including parts of speech, phrasal categories, the syntactic classification of verbs, movements of various kinds and grammatical functions. The ways in which language use, semantics, and pragmatics relate to syntax will also be discussed.

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

The first two or three weeks of the course are focused on the study of the Arabic alphabet and its sounds. After this, the focus shifts onto key grammar points, simple sentences and vocabulary, along with the practice of listening and oral skills. Attendance and homework are of great importance in this course. The course is taught in English.

This course is a prerequisite for MAF204G Arabic II.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

For a long time, sign languages were believed to be incomplete languages compared to spoken languages even if there was no research to support this claim. It was not until 1960 that William C. Stokoe  showed that American Sign Language (ASL) had the same basic grammatical structure as spoken languages even if ASL was expressed by hand movements and various non-manuals. Crucially, sign languages have meaningless units that can be combined to form meaningful signs just as sounds can be arranged to form meaningful words in spoken languages. This is one of the most important discoveries in linguistics in the 20th century even though it did not get much attention at the time. Since then, more evidence has been added to show the underlying commonalities of signed and spoken languages and sign language research is now a thriving field that has moved far beyound ASL, including Icelandic Sign Language.

This course focuses on the two main classes of human languages, sign languages and spoken languages, but the main emphasis will be on sign languages. Drawing on data of various kinds, the commonalities between signed and spoken languages will be shown with respect to phonology (the system of meaningless units), morphology, syntax, sociolinguistics, language change and other topics. The discussion will also focus on the contrasting properties of signed and spoken languages and to what extent they can be traced to different modalities.

This course aims at explaining the connection between diachronic language change and synchronic language variation, as it is generally assumed that language changes generate variants that coexist for a time and that all synchronic variants are caused by a language change of some kind. The course will, on the one hand, discuss the nature of language change and the main types of changes, and on the other hand, the nature of synchronic variation. We will focus on the development of Icelandic; hence, examples will primarily be taken from the history of Icelandic and from present-day Icelandic, but we will also look at parallels in other languages.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

A general introduction course in psychology. Main topics covered are sensation, perception, cognition, motivation, learning, development, personality, social perception, intelligence and psychopathology.

The main topics of this course are descriptive statistics and exploratory data analysis. Measures of central tendency and spread will be covered as well as Pearson's correlation and simple linear regression. The use of graphs to display distributions and relationships is emphasised. Sampling designs, probability theory and sampling distributions are also addressed.

Distance learning is not an option for this course. Students are expected to attend all lectures.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

This course will introduce the key methods of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience in research on language. We will discuss how the brain processes meaning and syntax, in addition to topics such as bilingualism, speech production, language development and comprehension of indirect language (such as irony). At the end of the course students will get insights into recent research on the genetics of language.

The course is taught in English alongside a masters level course, but the course requirements will be different.

This course is an introduction into some of the basic ideas and topics in theoretical syntax. The topics include phrase structure, X-bar theory, functional projections, verb raising, argument structure, case marking, binding principles and locality principles. The discussion will be based on examples from Icelandic, English and many other languages.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course provides an overview of bilingualism. Through cooperative and individual learning and a variety of delivery modes, students will explore current issues in the learning and using of multiple languages by individuals and groups. This includes the effect of demographic changes on language learning, educational achievement and social stratification by individuals and groups in multilingual societies, as well as, the socio-political and individual interactional implications of foreign language learning, bilingualism and diglossia in communities around the world.

The course gives an overview of the phonological system of Old Icelandic and its prehistory. We will read the First Grammatical Treatise and discuss its importance as source of evidence of Old Icelandic phonology and its contribution to the history of linguistics. The morphological structure of Old Icelandic will be treated in detail.

The teaching consists of lectures and special tutorial classes that will discuss homework assignments.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

An interdisciplinary and introductory course entailing a dialogue between the academic fields of the department, i.e. comparative literature, film studies, gender studies, art studies, linguistics, cultural studies, sign language and interpreting studies and translation studies. The latest international developments in the field of humanities will be examined and questions asked about the relationship of academic studies and our world view(s). We will analyse the semiotic system of language, inquiring whether it can serve as the basis for our understanding of other semiotic systems. We will ask about the connection and relationship between different languages and linguistic worlds. What is "multiculture"? How are spoken language, written language and visual language interconnected within society? What constitutes cultural literacy? Literature, art, film and other visual material will be examined in both a national and international context, with a view to how these semiotic systems influence the borderlines of gender, race, class, nation, and different world cultures. The study materials include theoretical and critical writings, literary works, visual art and images, and films, as well as some current media coverage. Evaluation is based on four assignments and a written exam.

A survey of the major features of the linguistic structure off Icelandic Sign Language and sign languages in general. The aim is that students understand the basic elements and structure of sign languages in general.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

The first two or three weeks of the course are focused on the study of the Arabic alphabet and its sounds. After this, the focus shifts onto key grammar points, simple sentences and vocabulary, along with the practice of listening and oral skills. Attendance and homework are of great importance in this course. The course is taught in English.

This course is a prerequisite for MAF204G Arabic II.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

This course aims at explaining the connection between diachronic language change and synchronic language variation, as it is generally assumed that language changes generate variants that coexist for a time and that all synchronic variants are caused by a language change of some kind. The course will, on the one hand, discuss the nature of language change and the main types of changes, and on the other hand, the nature of synchronic variation. We will focus on the development of Icelandic; hence, examples will primarily be taken from the history of Icelandic and from present-day Icelandic, but we will also look at parallels in other languages.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

A general introduction course in psychology. Main topics covered are sensation, perception, cognition, motivation, learning, development, personality, social perception, intelligence and psychopathology.

The main topics of this course are descriptive statistics and exploratory data analysis. Measures of central tendency and spread will be covered as well as Pearson's correlation and simple linear regression. The use of graphs to display distributions and relationships is emphasised. Sampling designs, probability theory and sampling distributions are also addressed.

Distance learning is not an option for this course. Students are expected to attend all lectures.

BA-thesis in General Linguistics

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

This course will introduce the key methods of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience in research on language. We will discuss how the brain processes meaning and syntax, in addition to topics such as bilingualism, speech production, language development and comprehension of indirect language (such as irony). At the end of the course students will get insights into recent research on the genetics of language.

The course is taught in English alongside a masters level course, but the course requirements will be different.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course provides an overview of bilingualism. Through cooperative and individual learning and a variety of delivery modes, students will explore current issues in the learning and using of multiple languages by individuals and groups. This includes the effect of demographic changes on language learning, educational achievement and social stratification by individuals and groups in multilingual societies, as well as, the socio-political and individual interactional implications of foreign language learning, bilingualism and diglossia in communities around the world.

The course gives an overview of the phonological system of Old Icelandic and its prehistory. We will read the First Grammatical Treatise and discuss its importance as source of evidence of Old Icelandic phonology and its contribution to the history of linguistics. The morphological structure of Old Icelandic will be treated in detail.

The teaching consists of lectures and special tutorial classes that will discuss homework assignments.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

An interdisciplinary and introductory course entailing a dialogue between the academic fields of the department, i.e. comparative literature, film studies, gender studies, art studies, linguistics, cultural studies, sign language and interpreting studies and translation studies. The latest international developments in the field of humanities will be examined and questions asked about the relationship of academic studies and our world view(s). We will analyse the semiotic system of language, inquiring whether it can serve as the basis for our understanding of other semiotic systems. We will ask about the connection and relationship between different languages and linguistic worlds. What is "multiculture"? How are spoken language, written language and visual language interconnected within society? What constitutes cultural literacy? Literature, art, film and other visual material will be examined in both a national and international context, with a view to how these semiotic systems influence the borderlines of gender, race, class, nation, and different world cultures. The study materials include theoretical and critical writings, literary works, visual art and images, and films, as well as some current media coverage. Evaluation is based on four assignments and a written exam.

A survey of the major features of the linguistic structure off Icelandic Sign Language and sign languages in general. The aim is that students understand the basic elements and structure of sign languages in general.

BA-thesis in General Linguistics

The meaning of words and sentences is often determined by the context, for instance in irony. How do listeners understand us if we don‘t always say what we mean? What do conversations in different cultures and languages have in common? In this course we will examine language in interaction from different perspectives. Key concepts in linguistic pragmatics will be introduced, including the contribution of context to meaning. The methodology and key topics of conversation analysis will be described along with recent comparative studies on language in interaction around the world. We will also briefly discuss interdisciplinary psycholinguistic research on pragmatics. Students will get hands-on experience with recording conversations, the conceptual analysis of talk, and use of relevant software (including Praat for analyzing and processing sound files and ELAN for annotation of conversation).

This is a joint course for students in Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics. It falls into two parts. On the one hand, in Thursday classes, the students receive training in critical thinking, scientific methods and academic writing. Topics include the use of handbooks and other sources, the style and structure of academic papers, research methods in linguistics and literature, conventions regarding citations and bibliographies, etc.

In the second part of the course, taught on Tuesdays, the students are introduced to the various sub-disciplines of Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics as academic subjects and their connection to other subject areas. Different teachers and other guests introduce their sub-disciplines and areas of specialization.

The course gives an introduction to linguistics and methods of linguistic analyses. The goal is to acquaint students with the nature of human languages and the main features of Icelandic grammar. 

The major aspects of the history of linguistics traced from the antiquity through the middle ages till the beginning of the 19th Century. The Old Icelandic grammatical treatises. The major aspects of the history of linguistics in the 19th and 20th century. Emphasis is placed on the theories and discoveries that have been most influential in the development of ideas and methods in linguistics.

An introductory course in Icelandic phonetics, phonology, and morphology. The basics of acoustic phonetics and Icelandic articulatory phonetics will be introduced, accompanied by training in phonetic transcription. The main concepts of phonology will be presented, followed by an overview of sound alternations in Icelandic and their conditions. Basic concepts in morphology will be presented and the main word formation processes in Icelandic and their productivity will be dealt with. Grammatical categories in Icelandic will be outlined, the inflection of the main parts of speech will be described, and an overview given of inflectional classes and variations.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

This course covers the basic issues in Icelandic syntax, including parts of speech, phrasal categories, the syntactic classification of verbs, movements of various kinds and grammatical functions. The ways in which language use, semantics, and pragmatics relate to syntax will also be discussed.

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

The first two or three weeks of the course are focused on the study of the Arabic alphabet and its sounds. After this, the focus shifts onto key grammar points, simple sentences and vocabulary, along with the practice of listening and oral skills. Attendance and homework are of great importance in this course. The course is taught in English.

This course is a prerequisite for MAF204G Arabic II.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

For a long time, sign languages were believed to be incomplete languages compared to spoken languages even if there was no research to support this claim. It was not until 1960 that William C. Stokoe  showed that American Sign Language (ASL) had the same basic grammatical structure as spoken languages even if ASL was expressed by hand movements and various non-manuals. Crucially, sign languages have meaningless units that can be combined to form meaningful signs just as sounds can be arranged to form meaningful words in spoken languages. This is one of the most important discoveries in linguistics in the 20th century even though it did not get much attention at the time. Since then, more evidence has been added to show the underlying commonalities of signed and spoken languages and sign language research is now a thriving field that has moved far beyound ASL, including Icelandic Sign Language.

This course focuses on the two main classes of human languages, sign languages and spoken languages, but the main emphasis will be on sign languages. Drawing on data of various kinds, the commonalities between signed and spoken languages will be shown with respect to phonology (the system of meaningless units), morphology, syntax, sociolinguistics, language change and other topics. The discussion will also focus on the contrasting properties of signed and spoken languages and to what extent they can be traced to different modalities.

This course aims at explaining the connection between diachronic language change and synchronic language variation, as it is generally assumed that language changes generate variants that coexist for a time and that all synchronic variants are caused by a language change of some kind. The course will, on the one hand, discuss the nature of language change and the main types of changes, and on the other hand, the nature of synchronic variation. We will focus on the development of Icelandic; hence, examples will primarily be taken from the history of Icelandic and from present-day Icelandic, but we will also look at parallels in other languages.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

A general introduction course in psychology. Main topics covered are sensation, perception, cognition, motivation, learning, development, personality, social perception, intelligence and psychopathology.

The main topics of this course are descriptive statistics and exploratory data analysis. Measures of central tendency and spread will be covered as well as Pearson's correlation and simple linear regression. The use of graphs to display distributions and relationships is emphasised. Sampling designs, probability theory and sampling distributions are also addressed.

Distance learning is not an option for this course. Students are expected to attend all lectures.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

This course will introduce the key methods of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience in research on language. We will discuss how the brain processes meaning and syntax, in addition to topics such as bilingualism, speech production, language development and comprehension of indirect language (such as irony). At the end of the course students will get insights into recent research on the genetics of language.

The course is taught in English alongside a masters level course, but the course requirements will be different.

This course is an introduction into some of the basic ideas and topics in theoretical syntax. The topics include phrase structure, X-bar theory, functional projections, verb raising, argument structure, case marking, binding principles and locality principles. The discussion will be based on examples from Icelandic, English and many other languages.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course provides an overview of bilingualism. Through cooperative and individual learning and a variety of delivery modes, students will explore current issues in the learning and using of multiple languages by individuals and groups. This includes the effect of demographic changes on language learning, educational achievement and social stratification by individuals and groups in multilingual societies, as well as, the socio-political and individual interactional implications of foreign language learning, bilingualism and diglossia in communities around the world.

The course gives an overview of the phonological system of Old Icelandic and its prehistory. We will read the First Grammatical Treatise and discuss its importance as source of evidence of Old Icelandic phonology and its contribution to the history of linguistics. The morphological structure of Old Icelandic will be treated in detail.

The teaching consists of lectures and special tutorial classes that will discuss homework assignments.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

An interdisciplinary and introductory course entailing a dialogue between the academic fields of the department, i.e. comparative literature, film studies, gender studies, art studies, linguistics, cultural studies, sign language and interpreting studies and translation studies. The latest international developments in the field of humanities will be examined and questions asked about the relationship of academic studies and our world view(s). We will analyse the semiotic system of language, inquiring whether it can serve as the basis for our understanding of other semiotic systems. We will ask about the connection and relationship between different languages and linguistic worlds. What is "multiculture"? How are spoken language, written language and visual language interconnected within society? What constitutes cultural literacy? Literature, art, film and other visual material will be examined in both a national and international context, with a view to how these semiotic systems influence the borderlines of gender, race, class, nation, and different world cultures. The study materials include theoretical and critical writings, literary works, visual art and images, and films, as well as some current media coverage. Evaluation is based on four assignments and a written exam.

A survey of the major features of the linguistic structure off Icelandic Sign Language and sign languages in general. The aim is that students understand the basic elements and structure of sign languages in general.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

The first two or three weeks of the course are focused on the study of the Arabic alphabet and its sounds. After this, the focus shifts onto key grammar points, simple sentences and vocabulary, along with the practice of listening and oral skills. Attendance and homework are of great importance in this course. The course is taught in English.

This course is a prerequisite for MAF204G Arabic II.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

This course aims at explaining the connection between diachronic language change and synchronic language variation, as it is generally assumed that language changes generate variants that coexist for a time and that all synchronic variants are caused by a language change of some kind. The course will, on the one hand, discuss the nature of language change and the main types of changes, and on the other hand, the nature of synchronic variation. We will focus on the development of Icelandic; hence, examples will primarily be taken from the history of Icelandic and from present-day Icelandic, but we will also look at parallels in other languages.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

A general introduction course in psychology. Main topics covered are sensation, perception, cognition, motivation, learning, development, personality, social perception, intelligence and psychopathology.

The main topics of this course are descriptive statistics and exploratory data analysis. Measures of central tendency and spread will be covered as well as Pearson's correlation and simple linear regression. The use of graphs to display distributions and relationships is emphasised. Sampling designs, probability theory and sampling distributions are also addressed.

Distance learning is not an option for this course. Students are expected to attend all lectures.

BA-thesis in General Linguistics

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

This course will introduce the key methods of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience in research on language. We will discuss how the brain processes meaning and syntax, in addition to topics such as bilingualism, speech production, language development and comprehension of indirect language (such as irony). At the end of the course students will get insights into recent research on the genetics of language.

The course is taught in English alongside a masters level course, but the course requirements will be different.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course provides an overview of bilingualism. Through cooperative and individual learning and a variety of delivery modes, students will explore current issues in the learning and using of multiple languages by individuals and groups. This includes the effect of demographic changes on language learning, educational achievement and social stratification by individuals and groups in multilingual societies, as well as, the socio-political and individual interactional implications of foreign language learning, bilingualism and diglossia in communities around the world.

The course gives an overview of the phonological system of Old Icelandic and its prehistory. We will read the First Grammatical Treatise and discuss its importance as source of evidence of Old Icelandic phonology and its contribution to the history of linguistics. The morphological structure of Old Icelandic will be treated in detail.

The teaching consists of lectures and special tutorial classes that will discuss homework assignments.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

An interdisciplinary and introductory course entailing a dialogue between the academic fields of the department, i.e. comparative literature, film studies, gender studies, art studies, linguistics, cultural studies, sign language and interpreting studies and translation studies. The latest international developments in the field of humanities will be examined and questions asked about the relationship of academic studies and our world view(s). We will analyse the semiotic system of language, inquiring whether it can serve as the basis for our understanding of other semiotic systems. We will ask about the connection and relationship between different languages and linguistic worlds. What is "multiculture"? How are spoken language, written language and visual language interconnected within society? What constitutes cultural literacy? Literature, art, film and other visual material will be examined in both a national and international context, with a view to how these semiotic systems influence the borderlines of gender, race, class, nation, and different world cultures. The study materials include theoretical and critical writings, literary works, visual art and images, and films, as well as some current media coverage. Evaluation is based on four assignments and a written exam.

A survey of the major features of the linguistic structure off Icelandic Sign Language and sign languages in general. The aim is that students understand the basic elements and structure of sign languages in general.

BA-thesis in General Linguistics

The meaning of words and sentences is often determined by the context, for instance in irony. How do listeners understand us if we don‘t always say what we mean? What do conversations in different cultures and languages have in common? In this course we will examine language in interaction from different perspectives. Key concepts in linguistic pragmatics will be introduced, including the contribution of context to meaning. The methodology and key topics of conversation analysis will be described along with recent comparative studies on language in interaction around the world. We will also briefly discuss interdisciplinary psycholinguistic research on pragmatics. Students will get hands-on experience with recording conversations, the conceptual analysis of talk, and use of relevant software (including Praat for analyzing and processing sound files and ELAN for annotation of conversation).

This is a joint course for students in Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics. It falls into two parts. On the one hand, in Thursday classes, the students receive training in critical thinking, scientific methods and academic writing. Topics include the use of handbooks and other sources, the style and structure of academic papers, research methods in linguistics and literature, conventions regarding citations and bibliographies, etc.

In the second part of the course, taught on Tuesdays, the students are introduced to the various sub-disciplines of Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics as academic subjects and their connection to other subject areas. Different teachers and other guests introduce their sub-disciplines and areas of specialization.

The course gives an introduction to linguistics and methods of linguistic analyses. The goal is to acquaint students with the nature of human languages and the main features of Icelandic grammar. 

The major aspects of the history of linguistics traced from the antiquity through the middle ages till the beginning of the 19th Century. The Old Icelandic grammatical treatises. The major aspects of the history of linguistics in the 19th and 20th century. Emphasis is placed on the theories and discoveries that have been most influential in the development of ideas and methods in linguistics.

An introductory course in Icelandic phonetics, phonology, and morphology. The basics of acoustic phonetics and Icelandic articulatory phonetics will be introduced, accompanied by training in phonetic transcription. The main concepts of phonology will be presented, followed by an overview of sound alternations in Icelandic and their conditions. Basic concepts in morphology will be presented and the main word formation processes in Icelandic and their productivity will be dealt with. Grammatical categories in Icelandic will be outlined, the inflection of the main parts of speech will be described, and an overview given of inflectional classes and variations.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

This course covers the basic issues in Icelandic syntax, including parts of speech, phrasal categories, the syntactic classification of verbs, movements of various kinds and grammatical functions. The ways in which language use, semantics, and pragmatics relate to syntax will also be discussed.

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

The first two or three weeks of the course are focused on the study of the Arabic alphabet and its sounds. After this, the focus shifts onto key grammar points, simple sentences and vocabulary, along with the practice of listening and oral skills. Attendance and homework are of great importance in this course. The course is taught in English.

This course is a prerequisite for MAF204G Arabic II.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

For a long time, sign languages were believed to be incomplete languages compared to spoken languages even if there was no research to support this claim. It was not until 1960 that William C. Stokoe  showed that American Sign Language (ASL) had the same basic grammatical structure as spoken languages even if ASL was expressed by hand movements and various non-manuals. Crucially, sign languages have meaningless units that can be combined to form meaningful signs just as sounds can be arranged to form meaningful words in spoken languages. This is one of the most important discoveries in linguistics in the 20th century even though it did not get much attention at the time. Since then, more evidence has been added to show the underlying commonalities of signed and spoken languages and sign language research is now a thriving field that has moved far beyound ASL, including Icelandic Sign Language.

This course focuses on the two main classes of human languages, sign languages and spoken languages, but the main emphasis will be on sign languages. Drawing on data of various kinds, the commonalities between signed and spoken languages will be shown with respect to phonology (the system of meaningless units), morphology, syntax, sociolinguistics, language change and other topics. The discussion will also focus on the contrasting properties of signed and spoken languages and to what extent they can be traced to different modalities.

This course aims at explaining the connection between diachronic language change and synchronic language variation, as it is generally assumed that language changes generate variants that coexist for a time and that all synchronic variants are caused by a language change of some kind. The course will, on the one hand, discuss the nature of language change and the main types of changes, and on the other hand, the nature of synchronic variation. We will focus on the development of Icelandic; hence, examples will primarily be taken from the history of Icelandic and from present-day Icelandic, but we will also look at parallels in other languages.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

A general introduction course in psychology. Main topics covered are sensation, perception, cognition, motivation, learning, development, personality, social perception, intelligence and psychopathology.

The main topics of this course are descriptive statistics and exploratory data analysis. Measures of central tendency and spread will be covered as well as Pearson's correlation and simple linear regression. The use of graphs to display distributions and relationships is emphasised. Sampling designs, probability theory and sampling distributions are also addressed.

Distance learning is not an option for this course. Students are expected to attend all lectures.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

This course will introduce the key methods of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience in research on language. We will discuss how the brain processes meaning and syntax, in addition to topics such as bilingualism, speech production, language development and comprehension of indirect language (such as irony). At the end of the course students will get insights into recent research on the genetics of language.

The course is taught in English alongside a masters level course, but the course requirements will be different.

This course is an introduction into some of the basic ideas and topics in theoretical syntax. The topics include phrase structure, X-bar theory, functional projections, verb raising, argument structure, case marking, binding principles and locality principles. The discussion will be based on examples from Icelandic, English and many other languages.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course provides an overview of bilingualism. Through cooperative and individual learning and a variety of delivery modes, students will explore current issues in the learning and using of multiple languages by individuals and groups. This includes the effect of demographic changes on language learning, educational achievement and social stratification by individuals and groups in multilingual societies, as well as, the socio-political and individual interactional implications of foreign language learning, bilingualism and diglossia in communities around the world.

The course gives an overview of the phonological system of Old Icelandic and its prehistory. We will read the First Grammatical Treatise and discuss its importance as source of evidence of Old Icelandic phonology and its contribution to the history of linguistics. The morphological structure of Old Icelandic will be treated in detail.

The teaching consists of lectures and special tutorial classes that will discuss homework assignments.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

An interdisciplinary and introductory course entailing a dialogue between the academic fields of the department, i.e. comparative literature, film studies, gender studies, art studies, linguistics, cultural studies, sign language and interpreting studies and translation studies. The latest international developments in the field of humanities will be examined and questions asked about the relationship of academic studies and our world view(s). We will analyse the semiotic system of language, inquiring whether it can serve as the basis for our understanding of other semiotic systems. We will ask about the connection and relationship between different languages and linguistic worlds. What is "multiculture"? How are spoken language, written language and visual language interconnected within society? What constitutes cultural literacy? Literature, art, film and other visual material will be examined in both a national and international context, with a view to how these semiotic systems influence the borderlines of gender, race, class, nation, and different world cultures. The study materials include theoretical and critical writings, literary works, visual art and images, and films, as well as some current media coverage. Evaluation is based on four assignments and a written exam.

A survey of the major features of the linguistic structure off Icelandic Sign Language and sign languages in general. The aim is that students understand the basic elements and structure of sign languages in general.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

The first two or three weeks of the course are focused on the study of the Arabic alphabet and its sounds. After this, the focus shifts onto key grammar points, simple sentences and vocabulary, along with the practice of listening and oral skills. Attendance and homework are of great importance in this course. The course is taught in English.

This course is a prerequisite for MAF204G Arabic II.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

This course aims at explaining the connection between diachronic language change and synchronic language variation, as it is generally assumed that language changes generate variants that coexist for a time and that all synchronic variants are caused by a language change of some kind. The course will, on the one hand, discuss the nature of language change and the main types of changes, and on the other hand, the nature of synchronic variation. We will focus on the development of Icelandic; hence, examples will primarily be taken from the history of Icelandic and from present-day Icelandic, but we will also look at parallels in other languages.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

A general introduction course in psychology. Main topics covered are sensation, perception, cognition, motivation, learning, development, personality, social perception, intelligence and psychopathology.

The main topics of this course are descriptive statistics and exploratory data analysis. Measures of central tendency and spread will be covered as well as Pearson's correlation and simple linear regression. The use of graphs to display distributions and relationships is emphasised. Sampling designs, probability theory and sampling distributions are also addressed.

Distance learning is not an option for this course. Students are expected to attend all lectures.

BA-thesis in General Linguistics

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

This course will introduce the key methods of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience in research on language. We will discuss how the brain processes meaning and syntax, in addition to topics such as bilingualism, speech production, language development and comprehension of indirect language (such as irony). At the end of the course students will get insights into recent research on the genetics of language.

The course is taught in English alongside a masters level course, but the course requirements will be different.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

The student chooses a subject in consultation with a regular teacher, studies it and writes a rapport or a paper on the subject. Please contact head of program for more information.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course provides an overview of bilingualism. Through cooperative and individual learning and a variety of delivery modes, students will explore current issues in the learning and using of multiple languages by individuals and groups. This includes the effect of demographic changes on language learning, educational achievement and social stratification by individuals and groups in multilingual societies, as well as, the socio-political and individual interactional implications of foreign language learning, bilingualism and diglossia in communities around the world.

The course gives an overview of the phonological system of Old Icelandic and its prehistory. We will read the First Grammatical Treatise and discuss its importance as source of evidence of Old Icelandic phonology and its contribution to the history of linguistics. The morphological structure of Old Icelandic will be treated in detail.

The teaching consists of lectures and special tutorial classes that will discuss homework assignments.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

An interdisciplinary and introductory course entailing a dialogue between the academic fields of the department, i.e. comparative literature, film studies, gender studies, art studies, linguistics, cultural studies, sign language and interpreting studies and translation studies. The latest international developments in the field of humanities will be examined and questions asked about the relationship of academic studies and our world view(s). We will analyse the semiotic system of language, inquiring whether it can serve as the basis for our understanding of other semiotic systems. We will ask about the connection and relationship between different languages and linguistic worlds. What is "multiculture"? How are spoken language, written language and visual language interconnected within society? What constitutes cultural literacy? Literature, art, film and other visual material will be examined in both a national and international context, with a view to how these semiotic systems influence the borderlines of gender, race, class, nation, and different world cultures. The study materials include theoretical and critical writings, literary works, visual art and images, and films, as well as some current media coverage. Evaluation is based on four assignments and a written exam.

A survey of the major features of the linguistic structure off Icelandic Sign Language and sign languages in general. The aim is that students understand the basic elements and structure of sign languages in general.

BA-thesis in General Linguistics