This was the last class I had to take for my linguistics major, and it really made me question all of my life decisions and truly made me feel that I was wasting my time here on campus. You'll spend 7+ weeks talking dragging through lectures and exercises on JUST pronoun binding, and the textbook is quite a difficult read, so it was really not helpful for me.

The class is doable and Dylan is super nice, but it's just not worth the time investment unless you're really interested in semantics.

This was a nice course. Pretty much the entire course revolves around creating semantic trees with bindings and lambda function denotations. Ironically, I found that my knowledge of syntax (for the trees) and CS (for the functions) prepared me more for this class than 120C.
Participation matters in that if you don't go to class, you won't know WTF is going on. My B was a consequence of that (oops). The professor is very helpful though, and does a great job of walking you through what you don't understand.

I really wanted to give this professor another chance after I took Ling 185A with him. Everything just seemed all over the place. I really love semantics and after having taken 120C with Rett I came into this class really excited and with high expectations, but I was defeated. This Professor is just not good at teaching in all honesty. He should be doing research. I decided to drop this class after finishing the first 2 homeworks because I felt like I was dragging myself through class and wasn’t really able to learn anything the first 3 weeks. There was such a lack of community in this class and the TA blatantly ignored me when I asked for help on a homework question. I’m genuinely sad that I won’t be taking 165C. I really hope someone else teaches it in the Fall or I’ll just have to take syntax which I’m not looking forward to.

This is one of my favorite classes taken here at UCLA. As mentioned by other reviews, the content is not easy for people who do not have a good background in computer science. But still, I would say that the content of this class would be worth the effort if you want to learn about the theories. Moreover, Professor Bumford and the TA Isa are super nice and have tried their best to help us learn: The lectures and homeworks are well prepared with slides and clear instructions; Also, they are very willing to help us in office hours every week. Professor Bumford also has a very good understanding of Haskell (the language taught in this class). In my opinion, his lectures on Haskell are better than those taught in the CS department in CS131.

For people who are interested to take this class with Professor Bumford, it would be helpful if you could have CS131 done beforehand -- half of this class would be "free" if you have a solid understanding of the Haskell or whatever functional programming language taught there. But taking CS131 beforehand is not necessary, as Professor Bumford does give very clear introductions to Haskell.

This class was horribly designed and the slides were confusing to follow along with. Professor was very passive aggressive and there was a lack of material to practice with and review. Easy class but wouldn't recommend prof

Good class. Selling textbook, Mathematical Structures in Language by Edward L. Keenan & Lawrence S. Moss. If interested, text **********

Don’t get me wrong, Dylan is a very great guy. My rating has nothing to do with the Professor but rather the course in general. It’s a super difficult class. There’s a lack in guidance on the HWs which are often abstracted by miles from lecture. On top of 8 homeworks, a final project is assigned about 3 days before the final, but unless you have a shit ton of time on your hands, you’ll have no time to start on it until during finals week. The averages for the final project were in the 20% range and the Professor doesn’t even curve the class because he so “graciously” extended ONE homework assignment. If you’re even in the slightest bit excited by “computational” linguistics and think it’s AI and some cool projects on computational voice assistants, don’t be. It has nothing to do with that. It’s the worst class I’ve ever taken. The TA for this class was freaking horrible too in terms of discussion sections having no relevance at all.

Prof. Bumford has made me love semantics. Highly recommended if you enjoy semantics. He's extremely nice and willing to help, and offers well prepared handouts for lectures.