Introduction to Linguistics

Catalog description

Class Hours: 3 Lab/Discussion: 0 Credits: 3 Description: An introduction to the study of languages as complex sets of interacting systems needed for human communication in a variety of interpersonal, academic, and professional contexts. Focuses on the fundamentals of sound systems, word structures, sentence structures, text structures, meaning systems, and language-related power systems. Also considers questions of how language develops over time, how languages are made up of a number of varieties, how languages are learned and used, how language use varies for different groups of users, and how these issues are related to cultural contexts including issues of power.