Course Schedule and Catalog

Department: College Courses

Meeting: 6:00PM - 6:50PM M (25-AUG-2025 - 5-DEC-2025) 

Part of Term: Full Term - No WL Purge

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Course Type: Seminar

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Method of Instruction: Face to Face

Credit Hours: 1

 

Section Max Enrollment: 19

Section Enrolled: 19

Waitlisted: 3 (Max 99) 

Current members of the waitlist have priority for available seats.

Enrollment data as of: 20-APR-2025 8:43AM

 

 

Final Exam: No Final Exam

 

Description: Starting from Tolkien’s Quenya and Sindarin, all the way to the minions’ “Bello!”, constructed languages have been widely used in various forms of media for worldbuilding or entertainment purposes. It’s easy to think of them as cool-sounding gibberish, but many of them are in fact well-constructed languages that contain all the building blocks to a functional language. By looking at the process of constructing conlangs with a linguistic perspective, this course will seek to answer a key question in Linguistics: How do languages differ from one another on a surface level but achieve similar goals of communication? Students will learn about the building blocks of languages, including phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax. In each section, students will be exposed to real world and conlang examples of how languages use these features. The course builds up to a semester-long final project, where students will use what they’ve learned during the semester to construct a language built around some hypothesis about the bounds of communication. No previous linguistic experience is needed, as all relevant concepts will be introduced during the class.