Course Name:
Introduction to Linguistics
Sept. 2012, for Grade 2010 Classes 1-6
English Undergraduate Program
Department of English
School of Foreign Language Studies
Nanchang University (NCU)
Course Instructor: Prof./Dr. JIANG
Syllabus
Course Description:
This course aims at providing undergraduate juniors of English major with a fundamental and systematic account of the basic knowledge of the studies of linguistics at the modern time with explanations, illustrations, and necessary examples from the course book and also from present English and Chinese language uses, to help develop the students’ interest in this study, to facilitate their understanding of the linguistic terms and theories, and to build a systematic knowledge of the said study.
Major Books Used for this Course:
1)Hu, Zhuanglin 2006.Linguistics. A Course Book (Third Edition). Beijing
University Press, used as students’ course book.
2) Robins, R. H. 1967/1997. A Short History of Linguistics (4th edn). London, New
York: Longman.
4) Yule, George. 2000. The Study of Language. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching
and Research Press.
5) Keith Brown et al. (eds.) 2006. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd edn),
Oxford: Elsevier.
6) Collinge, N. E. (ed.) 2005. An Encyclopaedia of Language. London, New York:
Routledge.
7) Strazny, Philipp (ed.) 2005. An Encyclopedia of Linguistics.New York, Oxon:
Fitzroy Dearborn.
8) Wikipedia.
9) Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2007. the electronic edition can be accessible on the
internet.
Course Requirements:
1)Attentive listening, active participation, quick note-taking and understanding,
nice presentation in class and all the related activities
2)Complete preview, in-class and after-class assignments
3)Pass the final examination
Course Schedule:
1)General Introduction
2)Chapter 1—Design features, origin, and functions of language
3)Chapter 1 — Main branches, macro-linguistics, and important distinctions
in linguistics
4)Chapter 2—Phonetic studies
5)Chapter 2—Phonological studies
6)Chapter 3—Word and Formation
7)Chapter 3—Word/lexical changes
8)Chapter 4—Syntactic relation, construction, and function
9)Chapter 4—Grammatical categories, phrasing and beyond
10)Chapter 5—Meaning and sense relation
11)Chapter 5—Meaning analyses
12)Chapter 8—Pragmatics (1)
13)Chapter 8—Pragmatics (2) --Post-Gricean developments
14)Chapter 11—Linguistics and foreign language teaching
15)Summary
Lecture 1
General Introduction:
Modern Linguistics and Earlier Linguistic Studies
In this lecture, we shall make a general introduction to the development of modern linguistics and the linguistic studies before that. The students will get a general view/picture of the developments, the main linguistic schools, and their studies through attending this lecture.
0.Leading in: What does your mind do most of the time? Or what do you do most of
the time in your life including the dreaming time when you sleep? What is your major? What is English? Language is what you use most of the time in your life and is also your major. Since you are language majors, very likely you will use it for your future work. Why not learn about it then? What is language? What does it cover? …These are the questions for linguistics.
1.The beginning of MODERN linguistics: 1916—
(Q1. When did modern linguistics begin?)
1) The first modern linguistic approach
a. The “father of modern linguistics”-- Ferdinand de Saussure索绪尔。