Syllabus
1. Semiotics, properties of sign systems, specifics of language signs. Language typology.
2. Phonetics: Phones and their classification, International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Phonetics of Czech and English. Prosody. Categorical perception.
3. Phonology: Phonotactics, phonological rules.
4. Morphology: Morphemes and their classification, morphological proceses.
5. Syntax: Phrase and dependency grammars. Structural ambiguity. Subcategorization, agreement, word-order, clitics. Basic overview of grammar formalisms (Government and Binding, HPSG, Categorial grammar).
6. History of linguistics: pre-structural linguistics (neogrammarians). Ferdinand de Saussure - the founder of structural linguistics. Glossematics & The Copenhagen School.
7. Functional linguistics according to the Prague School of Linguistics (language function, opposition system, assymetric dualism, form and function).
8. Prague School of Linguistics - sociolinguistic approach, sentence perspective, word-order.
9. Semantics and pragmatics: Meaning of words and sentences. Formal models of meaning. Context.
10. Historical linguistics: Types of language change, language reconstruction. Language families. Developmen of Czech and English. Attitudes toward language change.
11. Psycholinguistics: Language and the brain, aphasias. Language acquisition. Methods of the psycholinguistic research.
Annotation
The course will help students to get familiar with fundamental features of human language, its structure and development, its place in the society, etc. It also introduces linguistics as a science, its history and methodology, with focus on structural linguistics.