Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics

The cognitive basis of language - language and thought - overview, introduction - sign systems, structuring principles in language, linguistic and conceptual categories, summary, further reading, assignments; what's in a word? lexicology - overview, introduction -words, meanings and concepts, from words to meanings - semasiology, from concepts to words - onomasiology, conclusion - interplay between semasiology and onomasiology, summary, further reading, assignments; meaningful building blocks - morphology - overview, introduction, compounding, derivation, other word-formation processes, inflection and function words, conclusion - morphology, lexicon and syntax, summary, further reading, assignments; putting concepts together -syntax - overview, introduction - syntax and grammar, event schemes and participant roles, hierarchical and linear structure of the sentence, the grounding elements of a sentence, summary, further reading, assignments; the sounds of language - phonetics and phonology - overview, introduction - phonetics and phonology, production of speech sounds, consonants, vowels, phonemes and allophones - phonemic transcription, beyond the phoneme, sounds in context, summary, further reading, assignments; language, culture and meaning - cross-cultural semantics - overview, introduction - linguistic relativity and universalism, culture-specific words, culture-specific grammar, cultural scripts, conclusion - language, culture and thought, summary, further reading, assignments; doing things with words - pragmatics -overview, introduction - what is pragmatics? constitutive speech acts and felicity conditions, informative speech acts and cooperative interaction; obligative speech acts and polite interaction; conclusion - interplay between sentence structure and communicative intentions, summary, further reading, assignments; structuring texts - text linguistics - overview, communication, text and text linguistics, text representation, coherence versus cohesion, referential coherence, relational coherence, survey of coherence relations, summary, further reading, assignments; language across time - historical linguistics -overview, language change and language variation, methods of studying historical linguistics, typology of language change, causation and predictability, summary, further reading, assignment; language comparison - sociology of language, language typology and contrastive linguistics - overview, comparing languages, language typology, contrastive linguistics, summary, further reading assignments.