This course is an introduction to the scientific study of language - the academic discipline known as linguistics. What does it mean to say that you "know" a language? How is language organized in the brain? What does it mean to a linguist to "analyze" a language? How do languages resemble each other, how are they different? Why and how do languages change? Do dolphins have language? Does language control our view of reality? What role does language play in society and in politics? What is the best way to learn a foreign language? What kind of language should be taught in schools? Is English the World Language? What are the different language families in the world?
In the first half of the course we survey formal linguistic theory: phonetics (speech sounds), phonology (sound patterns), morphology (word formation), syntax (sentence formation), and semantics (meaning). The rest of the course is given over to sociolinguistics (language in society) and historical linguistics (language change and language relationships).
None
There will be four exams given at equal intervals through the semester.
Fromkin & Rodman, An Introduction to Language
| Morphology | Download practice morphology problems. Links to sites with more practice problems, morphological analyzers, and more. |
| Syntax | Download atree-building font. Links to essays on sentence structure, word order, syntactic ambiguity. Plus lots more... |
| Semantics | Links to WordNet and sites on semiotics, metaphors and meaning. |
| Phonetics | Phonetics exercises for practice with transcription and phoentic fonts for your computer. Also, links to help with articulatory as well as acoustic phonetics. |
| Phonology | Links to an online phonology course, phonology and sound change, and Canadian raising. |
| Psycholinguistics | Links to sites on language acquisition, neurolinguistics, and animal communication. |
| Sociolinguistics | An interactive dialect map, as well as links to sites on dialects, language policy, Ebonics, pidgins & creoles, and much more. |
| Historical | Download some historical linguistics problems for help with Grimm's Law, comparative reconstruction, and more. Links to sites on history of English, language change, Germanic languages, and more. |
| Writing | Links to mayan glyphs, ancient scripts, and all the scripts of the world. |
| Other | Links to sites on endangered languages, Tolkienian languages, computational linguistics, and fun with linguistics! |
| Courses | Lin306 | Resources |
Comments to: linclass@www.utexas.edu