Course overview
Language makes us human. Language allows humans to accumulate knowledge and transmit knowledge from one generation to the next and to communicate from one part of the world to the other. Language enables us to think, to analyse and to reflect. Different languages allow us to view the world in different ways. Language is much more than communication.
Linguistics is the study of human language, its nature, its origins and its uses. This course will give students an overview of the field of modern linguistics and basic skills in linguistic analysis. The Wonder of Language develops understandings of the various subsystems of language including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and the lexicon. It also investigates how languages are learned and how they change over time. As language is involved in a large number of human activities, linguistics contributes to many other fields of inquiry, including anthropology, psychology, philosophy, law and the natural sciences.
Course learning outcomes
- Be able to use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to transcribe Englishphonetically
- Be able to provide articulatory categorisations of speech sounds
- Perform a phonemic analysis to determine the phonemes and allophones of any given language
- Perform a morphological analysis to identify the morphemes and allomorphs in any givenlanguage
- Perform a syntactic analysis that identifies fundamental constituent structure and core grammatical relations
- Perform a semantic analysis of selected aspects of a language's lexicon
- Be able to identify pragmatic uses of language
- Be able to summarise, and exemplify with natural language data, key parameters of social and cultural language variation
- Be able to identify the key stages of child language acquisition
- Confidently approach analysis of a data set drawn from an unknown language
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