This course will introduce its participants to the mathematical and formal mechanisms that play a prominent role in the formulation and formalization of theories of syntax and semantics. The topics covered in this course include: set theory, logic, English as a formal language, and languages & grammars. The course is not straightforwardly a linguistics course, per se (in that it doesn't really cover a particular sub-discipline in the field). Rather, it is a course that teaches basic formalisms, and shows how these can be applied to an understanding of the working parts of human language. It is, in a way, a little like a course in learning how to use tools, rather than a course in how to make anything with those tools.