Linguistics 001     Schedule of lectures and readings

(Fall 2006)

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 an on-line textbook. As such, they generally provide 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. In many cases, additional links will be provided within the main page of lecture notes.

Because the lecture notes are updated each year, to modify the content as well as to refresh stale links, the new lecture notes will generally appear about a week before the date of the lecture. If you want to "read ahead", you can consult the links in the schedule for the fall 2005 edition.

1. We 09/06
Introduction to the course  
2. Mo 09/11
Perspectives and approaches

Miller, George A. "The Scientific Study of Language."
Ch. 1 of The Science of Words. (1991).

3. We 09/13
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. Mo 09/18 
Pinker, S. "An instinct to acquire an art".
Ch. 1 in The Language Instinct (1994).

Smith. and 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. We 09/20
Communication: philosophical perspectives

[see links in lecture notes]

6. Mo 09/25 
The pronunciation of English

 

7. We 09/27
Basic elements of linguistic form: morphology

(Just for fun:
"Psycholinguistics in the logging industry"
"All your base are belong to which lexical category?"
"Linguists boycott Intelligent Design hearings"
"Fearful (also nauseous, addictive, dubious, suspicious...) symmetry"
"Not a brillantological invention"
"W's conundrum"
"Euphony and usefulness"
"Cracking down on the Hezbollians"
"Playing with your morphology"
"Bogosity")

8. Mo 10/02
The sound of linguistic structure: phonetics
9. We 10/04 
The structure of linguistic sound: phonology
10. Mo 10/9  

Syntax I
(slides for Syntax lectures)

Read & study HW6 (and answers) from 2005
[note that you are not required to turn this in]

11. We 10/11 

Syntax II
(additional slides)

Beatrice Santorini's Syntax Text , Chap. 2:
"Constituent structure",
12. Mo 10/16
Meaning I: semantics
(additional slides)

 

13. We 10/18
Meaning II: pragmatics
Mo 10/22 FALL BREAK  
14. We 10/25
Language in society: sociolinguistics
Labov, W. "Driving Forces in Linguistic Change." International Conference on Korean Linguistics, August 2, 2002. Seoul National University
Mo 10/30 
Midterm (Study guide)
15. We 11/01
Language and gender  
16. Mo 11/06 
Linguistic form in art, ritual and play  
17. We 11/08
Patterns and performances in speech and music [Slides in .ppt form; zip archive including audio files]
(archive is about 27 MB)
18. Mo 11/13 
Language production and perception

 

19. We 11/15
Brain and language  
20. Mo 11/20 
Reading and writing

 

We 11/22 [Thanksgiving: No lecture]  
21. Mo 11/27
Child language acquisition
22. We 11/29
Languages of the World
Gibbs, W. W. "Saving Dying Languages". Scientific American, August 2002.
23. Mo 12/04
Language Change
24. We 12/06 
The Language of Law
Justice Antonin Scalia, "Law and Language: Review of 'Law's Quandary'", First Things, Nov. 2005.
Lawrence Solan, "Private Language, Public Laws: The Central Role of Legislative Intent in Statutory Interpretation", Georgetown Law Journal, 93(2), Jan. 2005
Geoffrey Nunberg, "The Book of Samuels", Fresh Air commentary.
We 12/20 Final Exam (9:00-11:00 a.m.)

home

homework

 

 

    [course home page]