Linguistics

This course is an introduction to the evolution of the German language focusing on older, more basic developments such as the first and second High German consonant shifts. The class utilizes raw data from dialects and Old/High German in order to gain an empirical understanding of the theoretical developments discussed in class. The mastery of said languages is not necessary to enroll in the course.

This seminar explores the relationship between language and cognition, investigating a variety of theoretical models and evaluating the empirical evidence collected to substantiate these models. The theoretical perspectives taken fall primarily within the sub-disciplines of psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and anthropological linguistics.

This is a graduate level course that is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. There are two versions of this course; this course, UCEAP Course Number 188A and Bologna course number 78696, is associated with the LM in Language, Society, and Communication degree programme. The other version, UCEAP Course Number 188B and Bologna course numbers 29886 and 81714, is associated with the LM in Modern, Post-Colonial and Comparative Literatures and the LM in Geography and Territorial Processes degree programmes.
This course examines languages as cultural features linking the human communities to their territories, history, and geopolitical evolution, with a particular analysis of the changes occurred in the spatial dimension of languages, in connection to acculturation processes and to linguistic policies. In this respect, the course deals with the regional division of the European languages and with the EU language policy both in respect to minority languages and to the process of linguistic education of its citizens. The relationship between linguistic diversity and biological diversity is also explored with a geographical focus on the issue of language death. The course examines the relationship between space/place and language from different perspectives. At the beginning of the course, the students explore the field of cultural geography and its main themes, concepts, and keywords. After having explored the differences between linguistic geography and geographies of languages, the course focus on the second and using both theories and empirical cases, looks at the interconnections between culture, cultural geography, and language geography; language as cultural phenomenon; toponyms and culture; and semiotics of space. Moreover, the course observes how the relationship between geography and language expresses itself in different configurations of bodies and spaces: digital and media spaces, literary spaces, migratory fluxes, terrorism discourses and place-bound semiotics, tourism performance, and cultural and intercultural spaces.

This course is an upper-division introduction to linguistics, the scientific study of human language, and to what characterizes human language and makes it different from other animal communication systems and other human cognitive systems. The course introduces the different components that human language is made of and how linguists investigate them. In particular, it looks at sounds (and signs) and how they can be combined to form bigger units up to words (phonetics, phonology, and morphology); it looks at words and how they can be combined to form bigger units up to sentences (syntax); finally, it looks at how words and sentences can be used to convey meaning (semantics and pragmatics). While doing so, it emphasizes the innate cognitive aspects of human language but also touches on those aspects that are sensitive to culture and society and determine some of the variation and differences among human languages. Some of the question the course addresses include: what is a language and what does knowledge of a language consist of; are human languages fundamentally different from other systems of animal communication; are some languages better than others; what's a dialect and how does it compare to a language; how do children acquire language, does our knowledge of language derive entirely from experience, or do humans come “hardwired” with certain innate capacities for language; how do languages develop and change over time? For practical reasons, English is the primary source of data and examples for the course for practical reasons as the lingua franca. Still, data from other languages are presented throughout the course, with special attention to Italian, other languages (aka "dialects") spoken in Italy, and languages spoken by the students in the course.

This course provides an account of the structure of Modern Scots dialects and Scottish English by examining variation in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexis from diachronic, synchronic and geographical perspectives.