Linguistics

In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky revolutionized the study of linguistics by treating language as something produced by the human brain. From this change in perspective, the study of language became an indirect way of studying the human mind. In addition to opening up new ways to approach the subject, this change also built a foundation for doing linguistics as a science. Grammar is seen not as a known set of rules that people need to study in order to learn but rather as the rules that result from the human mind trying to make sense of the language it is exposed to. In this class we will look at two sub-areas of linguistics from this perspective: syntax (the study of phrase structure in language) and semantics (the study of linguistic meaning).

This course gives students knowledge of the main processes of phonetic articulation (mode, manner, and place of articulation, airstream mechanisms, voicing, secondary articulations (velarization, palatalization, lip-rounding etc, vowel articulation including backness, height, and roundness, plus a basic understanding of tone and pitch). It also provides students with an understanding of how those processes are used in producing speech sounds, and with an ability to represent different sounds using an international standard (the IPA). In addition, students are able to discriminate sounds aurally, and produce them from IPA script. The course first focuses on the sounds of English before examining sounds that are used in the world's languages. This course is a pre-requisite for the Introduction to Phonology course.

This course explores the research on the processes by which children acquire their first language. It also examines second language acquisition and theories of second language learning.

This course covers applied areas of language use. It consists of a study of language in its social context, of theories of second language acquisition, and of an examination of language in its broader discursive context.

This course examines the phenomenon of written language from a range of perspectives. It begins by exploring the beginnings and historical development of writing, in the process considering the ways in which different writing systems (e.g., word-writing, syllable writing, alphabetic writing) represent different aspects of language. Further points of discussion are drawn from among the following: the debate around the social and individual consequences of literacy; the orthography of English; the mental processes involved in reading; written texts as coherent communicative acts; information structure and flow in written texts; differences between the language of speech and the language of writing; and the relationship between written language and communication technologies.