24.900 | Fall 2012 | Undergraduate

Introduction to Linguistics

Lecture Summaries

Most lecture topics have either accompanying lecture summaries or slides.

SES # TOPICS SUMMARIES / SLIDES
Introduction
1

What’s it all about?

Branches of linguistics

Language acquisition: what’s innate, what’s learned?

No lecture summary or slides available
Morphology
2–4

The notion “lexicon”

No word or morpheme boundaries in the speech signal

Affixes: prefixes, suffixes

The rule “Merge”

How structure interacts with sound and with meaning

Syntactic category

Affixes: reduplication, infixes

Solving morphology problems

Subcategorization

Derivational vs. inflectional morphology

Morphology lectures summary (PDF)
**Phonetics (Sounds of Speech: Production and Perception)**
5–7

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Articulatory phonetics / distinctive features

Consonants: place, manner, aspiration, nasality

Vowels

Acoustic phonetics, categorical perception

The McGurk effect

Finish phonetics, start phonology

Phonetics lectures summary (PDF)
**Phonology (Sounds of Speech: Their Grammar)**
8–12

Phonology vs. phonetics

Phonological rules

Underlying form

Complementary distribution

Phoneme and allophone

How to determine the phonemes of a language

Rule ordering

Syllable structure

Phonology lectures summary (PDF)
Writing Systems
13

Writing systems as a technology for representing speech

Types of systems: pictographic, syllabary, alphabet

Origins of the Roman alphabet

Phonemic vs. phonetic alphabetic writing systems

Writing systems lecture slides (PDF - 2.0MB)
**Syntax (Sentence Structure)**
14–18

Syntactic categories (noun, verb, etc.)

Phrase structure

Subcategorization in syntax

Chomsky’s Locality Condition on subcategorization

The notion “head”

Complements and adjuncts

Head-initial vs. head-final languages

Movement

Movement as “internal merge”

wh-movement

Topicalization

V-to-C movement

Patterns of pronunciation (overt, covert, split)

Verb-second

The notion “parameter”

Movement and word-order variation

A language universal: the Final-over-Final Constraint (FOFC)

Syntax lectures summary (PDF)
Acquisition of Syntax
19

Stages of acquisition

Learning vs. innateness vs. maturation

Acquisition of syntax lecture summary (PDF)
Semantics (Grammar of Meaning) / Semantics and Pragmatics
20–21

Pronouns and binding

Quantifier scope

Negative polarity items

Semantics lecture slides (PDF - 1.0MB)

Note: these slides were produced by Hadas Kotek and are used by permission

Controversies, Myths and Crazy Rumors about Language
22

Selected from such issues as…

Does the language of the Pirahã disprove theories about language?

Why did Stalin write articles about linguistics?

What does teaching children to read have to do with right-wing vs. left-wing politics?

How many words for snow does Eskimo have? Should we care?

No lecture summary or slides available
Historical Change
23–24

Synchronic vs. diachronic linguistics

Internalist vs. externalist views of change

Pidgins, Creoles, Creolization

Language families

The Indo-European language family: language and culture

Linguistics and the Romantic movement

History of English

Historical change lectures summary (PDF)

Historical change lectures slides (PDF - 1.1MB)

Dialects: Facts and Controversies
25–27

What is a dialect?

The politics of languages and dialects

Dialects of North American English

The “Ebonics” controversy

Dialects lectures slides (PDF - 1.6MB)

Course Info

As Taught In
Fall 2012
Learning Resource Types
Lecture Notes