Linguistics 001 -- Fall 2002 -- Schedule

(Fall 2002)

Follow the links in the middle column for lecture notes. In this course, these are notes for the lecture, rather than notes on the lecture, so that they serve as a sort of on-line textbook, providing a larger volume of material than is presented in the lectures. In class, I'll give an overview of the day's topic, and work through examples and sample problems in detail, typically in ways that are not entirely covered in the lecture notes.

The right-hand column provides links to additional course readings. These are articles or book chapters that provide useful background. There will be one or two of these additional readings each week.

Lecture notes will usually be posted after each lecture, while readings will usually be posted about a week in advance. To see some material in advance, you can look at the Fall 2001 or Spring 2002 editions of the course; we will follow the Fall 2001 syllabus fairly closely, though with different readings and homework assignments, and some significant changes in the lecture notes.

1. Mo 09/09	Introduction to the course
2. We 09/11	Perspectives and approaches	Miller, George A. "The Scientific Study of Language." Ch. 1 of The Science of Words. (1991).
3. Mo 09/16	Prescriptive and descriptive linguistics	Nunberg G. "The Decline of Grammar". The Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1983., Halpern, M. "A War that Never Ends". The Atlantic Monthly, March 1997.
4. We 09/18	Communication: a biological perspective	Pinker, S. "An instinct to acquire an art". Ch. 1 in The Language Instinct (1994). Smith, J.M. and E. Szathmary, The Origins of Life. (1999): Ch. 2 "The Major Transitions" Ch 12 "From Animal Societies to Human Societies" Ch. 13 "The Origin of Language"
5. Mo 09/23	Communication: philosophical and mathematical perspectives
6. We 09/25	Basic elements of linguistic form: morphology
7. Mo 09/30	The sound of linguistic structure: phonetics
8. We 10/02	The structure of linguistic sound: phonology
9. Mo 10/07	The pronunciation of English
10. We 10/09	Combining words into phrases: syntax I
11. Mo 10/14	Formal models of language structure: syntax II
12. We 10/16	Meaning I: semantics
13. Mo 10/21	Meaning II: pragmatics
We 10/23	Midterm
14. Mo 10/28	Language in society: sociolinguistics
15. We 10/30	Language and gender
16. Mo 11/04	Linguistic form in art, ritual and play
17. We 11/06	Language production and perception
18. Mo 11/13	Brain and language
19. We 11/13	Reading and writing
20. Mo 11/18	Child language acquisition
21. We 11/20	Languages of the World
22. Mo 11/25	Language Change
We 11/27	[Thanksgiving: No lecture]
23. Mo 12/02	Signed and spoken language
24. We 12/04	Language technology
25. Mon 12/09	Language and the law
	Final Exam