The above quote typifies the viewpoint of someone who is not even marginally aware of generative grammar and current phonological theory.  In this class we will challenge this viewpoint and discover that phonological theory is an exciting and dynamic field of study.  The search for phonological universals provides us with important insights not just  about the human mouth,  but also about the human mind.

This course is an introduction to the theoretical study of sound systems.  The focus of the class is on the analysis of phonological data within a linguistically principled framework.  Students will practice solving phonological problems from a wide variety of languages.  We will explore the nature of the knowledge that humans have about their language sound system.  We will investigate the optimal way to represent this phonological knowledge and discuss various issues such as the efficacy of the set and structure of distinctive features, phonological rule formalism and rule ordering,  the role of phonetics in phonology, rule typology, stress, and optimality theory.