Online Course : An Introduction to Linguistics

A Recommended FREE online course for English linguistics students.
In this course you will study 6 modules in 6 weeks as listed below:

• Introduction to Linguistics

A brief introduction about the course.
What makes human language and animal communication system different?
What characterises human and animal languages?

+ discrete infinity.
+ displacement.
+ joint attention.

What are revolutionary origins of language?
Some points about language diversity:

+ how many languages exist?
+ how can they differ?
+ language families.

What do linguists do?
Some points about sign language.

• The study of sound: Phonology and Phonetics

Distinguishing consonants.
Production of speech sounds.
Phonological activity.
Symmetry of consonants.
Path of acquisition.
Speech errors.
Sounds and language change.

• The study of words and sentences: Morphology and Syntax

Words and sentences.
Morphology:

+ criteria of words.
+ parts of words.
+ language classifications:

- Isolating language.
- Agglutinative language.
- Fusional language.
- Polysynthetic language.

Syntax and word order.

• The study of meaning: Pragmatics and Semantics

Layers of meaning:

+ semantic meaning.
+ pragmatic meaning:

- speech acts.
- maxims of speech.

• Language in the Brain

What is the relation between language and the brain.
How they influence each other.
Some language related problems.
Everyday mistakes.

• Language in the Society

Language change and variation.
Social stratification.
How do people use language to be polite?

Video interviews with well-known and famous linguists such as Noam Chomsky and Adele Goldberg and with speakers of many different languages are scheduled.
Samples are provides by language informants of 6 different languages: Tarifit berber, Gungbe, Turkish, Abruzzese, Mandarian Chinese and Basque.

mini-lectures, readings, quizzes are also scheduled.

You can start learning whenever you want.

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