UCL - General linguistics

[FLTR1560]

[30h] 3 credits

This course is taught in the 2d semester.

Teacher(s):

Language: French

Level: First

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

The course seeks to familiarize students with the tools of linguistic analysis by deepening their sensibilities to the problems linked to the evolution, variety, and dispersion of languages. It aims at providing students with an essential know-how for the analysis of the languages in their respective curricula. Finally, the course gives the students an overview of the different approaches to linguistic analysis and shows them how to develop a critical attitude towards the methodological and epistomological aspects of these approaches.

Main themes

- Basic properties of human language, language development, linguistic genealogy and typology.

- Basic pretheoretical and theoretical approaches to linguistic analysis: European structuralism, American structuralisme, generative-minimalist grammar, cognitive grammar, functional grammar. Opinions on the nature of human language and on the nature of the data to be used in linguistic analysis and basic analytical methods

- Exercises implementing the analytical methods involving a variety of European and non-European languages.

Content and teaching methods

The goal of the course is, on the one hand, to provide the essentials about the nature of human language, its origin, its extension and diversity, and, on the other hand, to give an overview of modern linguistic theory in order tho shed light on how our current understanding of language is the result of different but complementary views. Special attention will be given to the methods which characterize each approach. The General Linguistics course will deal in particular with comparatism, Saussurean and american structuralism, generative grammar, cognitive grammar and functional grammar.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Nil.