Introduction to Linguistics.
Nothing is more distinctly human than our ability to use language.
This course is an analytic introduction to the methods which linguists for describing human languages. General training in analytic thought is the ultimate goal of this course, but the specific focus is language and languages. Our study will draw on examples from a large number of the languages of the world. We will look at the sounds of language, how they are produced, and how they are patterned into words. We will study the diverse ways in which individual languages approach the processes of word and sentence formation, while we try to decide if there are processes which are universal to all human languages.