Linguistics 001 Schedule of lectures and readings

(Fall 2005)

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 2003 edition.

1. We 09/07	Introduction to the course
2. Mo 09/12	Perspectives and approaches	Miller, George A. "The Scientific Study of Language." Ch. 1 of The Science of Words. (1991).
3. We 09/14	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 09/19	Communication: a biological perspective [slides from lecture]	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. We 09/21	Communication: philosophical perspectives	[see links in lecture notes]
6. Mo 09/26	The pronunciation of English
7. We 09/28	Basic elements of linguistic form: morphology
8. Mo 10/03	The sound of linguistic structure: phonetics
9. We 10/05	The structure of linguistic sound: phonology
10. Mo 10/10	Syntax I
11. We 10/12	Syntax II (slides for Syntax lectures)	Beatrice Santorini's Syntax Text , Chap. 2: "Constituent structure",
Mo 10/17	FALL BREAK
12. We 10/19	Meaning I: semantics
13. Mo 10/24	Meaning II: pragmatics
14. We 10/26	Language in society: sociolinguistics	Labov, W. "Driving Forces in Linguistic Change." International Conference on Korean Linguistics, August 2, 2002. Seoul National University
Mo 10/31	Midterm	(Study guide)
15. We 11/02	Language and gender
16. Mo 11/07	Linguistic form in art, ritual and play
17. We 11/09	Language production and perception
18. Mo 11/14	Brain and language
19. We 11/16	Reading and writing
20. Mo 11/21	Child language acquisition
We 11/23	[Thanksgiving: No lecture]
21. Mo 11/28	Languages of the World	Gibbs, W. W. "Saving Dying Languages". Scientific American, August 2002.
22. We 11/30	Language Change
23. Mo 12/05	Signed and spoken language
24. We 12/07	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.

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