INTRODUCTION TO GENERAL LINGUISTICS Nina Setyaningsih

Tips for Your First Ling. Class Be prepared for a little bit of memorization. Every introductory linguistics course covers the International Phonetic Alphabet pretty early on in the class and students are expected to memorize at least part of it. Be patient with yourself. Introductory linguistics classes are always a bit of a whirlwind. You’re swept from subdiscipline to subdiscipline and just as soon as you’re feeling comfortable with morphology suddenly it’s on to syntax with no chance to catch your breath. It’s just the nature of a introductory survey course, though; it’s a tasting menu, not an a la carte.

Ask for help. Don’t be afraid of asking for extra help if you don’t understand something. Form a study group. There are also lots of great resources online you can read. Start all assignments MORE than the night before. It’s very useful to be able to sleep on it and come up with the thing that was puzzling you at first try. Also, it gives you time to go to office hours to ask questions about where you’re stuck rather than desperately emailing your teacher less than 24 hours before it’s due.

Why Study Linguistics? Linguistics: related to your English studies But also a science  The scientific study of language Increasing our knowledge Linguistics is the study of this system—what its pieces are, how they combine, and how we acquire the system they form, as well as how we use it to express who we are socially and culturally. In contrast to other scholars of language, linguists are more interested in how we communicate than in what we communicate.

Linguists ask questions of the following sort: What sounds do human languages use, and how can we describe them? What processes can be used to form words, and what sorts of rules combine words into phrases? How many languages are there in the world and what similarities and differences are there between them? Why and how do languages change over time? What is a dialect? In what ways do dialects differ? Why are some dialects looked down on? Why is it so easy to acquire a language as a baby, but so much harder as an adult?

What opportunities will I have with a linguistics degree? Graduate Studies and Professional Programs MA and PhD programs in fields such as linguistics, cognitive science, psychology, computer science, anthropology, philosophy, communication sciences, education, English, cognitive neuroscience, and the study of particular language(s). TESOL and applied linguistics programs focused on teaching English to non-native speakers. Professional programs such as law school, speech pathology, communication sciences and disorders, or library/information science.

What can you do with a degree in linguistics? Obvious answer #1: Get another degree in linguistics! Obvious answer #2: Teach computers how to language! Obvious answer #3: Help children and adults overcome speech problems! Obvious answer #4: Work as a translator! Obvious answer #5: Teach languages! Be a lawyer! Make up languages! Work in the publishing industry, as a technical writer, or as a journalist Work for an advertising company Do anything you like! Really, linguistics training gives you a great set of skills.

DEFINITIONS OF LINGUISTICS LINGUISTICS in a broader sense: collective term for sciences which study language (General Linguistics, Dialectology, Philology, Language Philosophy, …). GENERAL LINGUISTICS/LINGUISTICS in a narrower sense: the scientific or systematic study of LANGUAGE. It is a science in the sense that it scientifically studies the rules, systems and principles of human languages.

Main Purposes of Linguistics It studies the nature of LANGUAGE and tries to establish a theory of LANGUAGE and describes languages in the light of the theory established. It examines all the forms of LANGUAGE in general and seeks a scientific understanding of the ways in which it is organized to fulfill the needs it serves and the functions it performs in human life.

For next week Read 1st chapter of Introducing English Linguistics, or Linguistics for Dummies