Linguistics and Cognitive Science

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Professor Deborah Burke², department chair (fall)
Assistant Professor Mary Paster, department chair (spring)

Professors Atlas³, Burke²
Assistant Professors Diercks, Paster
Instructor Harris¹
Lecturer Landman

The curriculum of the Linguistics and Cognitive Science Department offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of language and mind. The major features core courses in linguistics and cognitive science followed by a choice of two tracks: one emphasizing linguistics and the other cognitive science.

Linguistics as a discipline focuses on the scientific study of human language – its theoretical, descriptive, social and behavioral bases. It also serves as a privileged window into human cognition. As such, our evolving understanding of language has had, and continues to have, a profound influence on fields as diverse as philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, literature, music and computer science.

Cognitive science is concerned with a unified approach to the human mind and the nature of intelligent behavior: language, meaning, knowledge, thinking, perceiving, remembering, emotion, consciousness and other mental phenomena. Central issues in the discipline include the structure, acquisition, use and internal representation of language; the interpretation of sensory experience; the development of formal and informal reasoning skills; the nature of self and consciousness; and the neural basis of cognition.

The Linguistics and Cognitive Science curriculum is a cooperative intercollegiate program; linguistics and cognitive science classes taught at the other Claremont Colleges count as Pomona courses in the completion of the major.

• Linguistics and Cognitive Science Major
   
• Cognitive Science Minor
   
• Linguistics Minor
   
• Linguistics and Cognitive Science Courses
   

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