School of English - AUTh

Description

This is the first part of an Introduction to Linguistics, i.e. the scientific study of language. This module deals with topics in general linguistics and proceeds to the subfields of phonetics, phonology and morphology. Moreover, reference is made to areas of research like sociolinguistics and dialectology.

The course aims at introducing students to foundational concepts and basic terms in linguistics. It begins with a discussion of what constitutes a language and how it is different from other communication systems. The topics to be discussed include, among others, the relation between language and society, language and thought, language and variation. Through these, the descriptive, as opposed to prescriptive, role of linguistics is demonstrated.

The course then proceeds to the area of Phonetics, in which the articulatory mechanisms of producing sounds and speech are described and the difference between sounds and their typical orthographic representation is explained; a solution to this problem is provided through the adoption of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The next part concerns the area of Phonology, which focuses on the functional nature of sounds; the terms phoneme and allophone are introduced, the importance of the environment in which sounds occur and the processes of their interaction when they co-occur are examined. In the area of Morphology, the emphasis is placed on words and their constituent parts, introducing morphemes and their different realizations (allomorphs). The idea of distinguishing between underlying and surface structure and processes is also introduced. Word-formation processes, such as inflection, derivation and compounding are also briefly discussed. Finally, reference is made to the linguistic variation observed in different parts of a country or a geographical region or within a social group, introducing the areas of Dialectology and Sociolinguistics.

Teaching