Hong Kong

Music moves us, and we know not why, and it is harder still to explain what we are listening to. Taking these issues as a point of departure, this course introduces students to a wide array of music, as well as a range of ways of thinking, talking, and writing about music. Attention will be given to the development of listening skills and the vocabulary necessary to articulate an engaged response to the repertoire studied. The majority of music dealt with will be drawn from the classical music repertoire, with supplementary examples from other musical cultures when appropriate.

This course develops students' conceptual and perceptual understanding of the basic materials and structures of music, including rhythm and meter, intervals and scales, modes and keys, as well as melody, harmony, and contrapuntal practices. The course integrates ear training with the analysis of a wide array of musical examples. Students completing this course are expected to have established a clear and solid understanding of the rudiments of music, and be able to make practical demonstrations of this knowledge. The course will serve as a thorough review of aural and theoretical skills necessary for those intending to major or minor in music. It is also available as an elective to students in other departments who seek a solid foundation in music fundamentals.

This course will examine jazz from its origins to the present and its relation to other forms of music, including blues, gospel, R&B, soul, etc. Different styles within the jazz genre will also be explored, including early jazz, swing, behop, cool jazz, hardbop, soul jazz, bossa nova, post-bop, and avante garde. Special attention will also be given to pivotal figures in the history of jazz, such as Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. Representative and monumental instrumental and vocal recordings from the past one hundred years will also be explored. Class time will be spent listening to, analyzing, and discussing a wide variety of recorded jazz performances and watching jazz videos. Visiting artists may also be invited to perform in class and lecture on relevant topics.

This course introduces a range of musical traditions from around the world and examines them in their social, cultural, and historical contexts. The course explores music as both a reflection and creation of society, discusses issues raised by cross-cultural research, and provides a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between music and culture. Formal lectures will be supplemented by in-class demonstrations and hands-on experience of selected musical styles.

- Linear algebra [vectors and scalars, inner product, vector projection, linear dependence and independence, matrix, determinant, matrix inverse, system of linear equations, matrix equation, Gaussian elimination, Cramer's rule, matrix rank, eigenvalue, eigenvector, matrix diagonalization, positive, negative and semi-definiteness, and their applications]
- Elementary complex variables [arithmetics of complex numbers, representations of complex numbers, De Moivre's theorem, roots of unity, complex functions, and their applications]
- Basic probability theory [axioms of probability, conditional probability, Bayes' theorem, the total probability formula, random variable, (joint) probability distribution, expectation, variance, independence, and their applications]
- Commonly used distributions [Bernoulli, Binomial, Geometric, Negative Binomial, Exponential, Poisson and Normal distribution, and their applications]
- Basic statistics [point estimates, sample mean, sample variance with known or unknown mean, confidence interval for a population mean with known or unknown population variances, inference for proportion, and their applications]

Language is inherently variable. No two people speak the same way, nor does one person use the same speech patterns in all contexts. This type of variation is not random, but structured, and depends on the identities of the speaker and their audience, the topic of conversation, the speaker’s attitude, and a variety of other social and linguistic factors. This course will introduce students to the field of variationist sociolinguistics, which is concerned with the systematic study of language variation and its relationship to linguistic structure and social meaning. This course will focus on phonetic, phonological, and morphophonological variation, but variation at other levels of linguistic structure will also be addressed. Students will learn to describe and interpret patterns of linguistic variation, discuss and evaluate primary studies of sociolinguistic variation, and implement research methods and computational tools for investigating variation. Students will synthesize these skills by conducting a small-scale original study of sociolinguistic variation as a final project.

This course focuses on distinctive aspects of the Cantonese language as spoken in Hong Kong. The language will be viewed in its areal and historical context. Grammatical topics will include parts of speech in Cantonese, verbal aspect, noun classifiers, and sentence-final particles, with a particular focus on aspects of syntax which diverge from written Chinese and Putonghua such as dative, passive and comparative constructions. Topics of sociolinguistic interest such as the use of Cantonese as a written language, ‘lazy pronunciation’ and the growth of ‘trendy language’ will also be addressed.

The course explores recent theoretical approaches to syntax, focusing on generative grammar.

The course introduces students to the study of the relationship between language and society. The course includes topics like language variation and change, language and gender, multilingualism and language contact, and language policy. Aspects like the distinction between language and dialect will be covered next to how language attitudes shape our communicative behaviour and the way we perceive speakers. The course has both theoretical and empirical content and includes many case studies and practical exercises from languages and regions around the world. This course is recommended for linguistics majors and is an important asset for anyone who seeks to understand how language affects how we relate to each other in society.

This course focuses on structural and cognitive aspects of meaning which are relevant to the description and theory of grammar. Examples will be drawn from Cantonese, Mandarin and English together with some other European and Asian languages.