Introduction to Linguistics

The ability to speak and understand a language involves having mastered (quite unconsciously) an intricate and highly structured rule-governed system. Linguists seek to model that rule system. This course introduces students to the areas of phonetics (speech articulation and transcription), phonology (the principles that govern how sounds are put together), morphology (the principles governing word structure), syntax (the rule system governing sentence structure), and semantics (the system that relates sentences to meanings).