Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science

Telephone: (302) 831-6806
https://www.udel.edu/academics/colleges/cas/units/departments/linguistics-cognitive-science/
Faculty Listing: https://www.udel.edu/academics/colleges/cas/units/departments/linguistics-cognitive-science/our-people/

The Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science offers a BS in Cognitive Science, a BA in Linguistics, a combined 4+1 BA/BS and MA in Linguistics and Cognitive Science, and two minors, one in Linguistics and one in Cognitive Science.

As part of the major in Cognitive Science, concentrations are possible in Speech Language Pathology, Science of Language, Psychological Foundations of Cognitive Science, Philosophical Foundations of Cognitive Science, and in Computational, Mathematical, & Logical Foundations of Cognitive Science. Many of the courses offered by the Department fulfill the University’s DLE, Multicultural, and Breadth requirements as well as the College of Arts and Sciences Breadth requirements.

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Language is one of the most complex cognitive tasks that humans engage in, yet it is used effortlessly and subconsciously and is acquired by infants with no formal instruction. Language can be studied from many different angles: its formal properties comprise the core areas of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics; psycholinguistics is the study of the psychology of language (how it is represented in the mind/brain and how it is used in real time); language acquisition studies how infants acquire language; sociolinguistics studies language as a social construct; language typology investigates how languages differ and how they are the same. Applied areas of linguistics seek to improve methods of teaching second languages, or to improve the treatment of language disorders.

Cognitive Science

The interdisciplinary field of cognitive science studies the human mind viewed as a computational process. It lies at the confluence of computer science, educational and cognitive development, linguistics, neuroscience, neurobiology, philosophy, psychology, and certain areas of mathematics. Cognitive science has arguably been the most important development in the study of human thinking in the past thirty years; its influence can be seen across a wide variety of disciplines, from logic to communication disorders. One goal of cognitive science is to determine structures and processes that underlie cognitive tasks such as perception, memory, attention, language, and motor control. A second aim is to explain how organisms come to possess such structures and processes. These two types of projects can also play an important role in more applied areas such as artificial intelligence, educational psychology, and communication disorders.

As a nascent discipline, cognitive science seeks to model and explain such phenomena as language, reasoning, and perception. The goal of cognitive science as a theoretical discipline is to determine those knowledge structures and processes that characterize organisms as biological information processing systems, as well as to explain how these organisms come to possess this knowledge. Applied cognitive science takes the results of this research to such diverse areas as language technology, cognitive approaches to education, human-computer interaction, etc. The latter field addresses the most effective use of technology by people and includes the study of user interfaces, graphical displays, visualization of data, virtual reality, technology-based education, intelligent agents, and computer-based assistive technology for persons with disabilities. At the University of Delaware the discipline of linguistics plays an especially strong role in cognitive science. This is true because linguists have developed successful models of natural languages in central areas of cognition, and because the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science houses the BS in Cognitive Science.

Programs

Major

Minor

Honors Degree

4+1