1. Introduction to Language
Deny A. Kwary

2. The Textbook The Course Materials Introduction to Language
By. Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams
The Course Materials
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Download the lecture materials

3. What is Language?
Language is the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way.

4. The Creativity Aspect of Language
Human language must be creative: allowing novelty and innovation is response to new thoughts, experiences, and situations

5. Linguistic Knowledge
Knowledge of the Sound System: Knowing what sounds are in that language and what sounds are not.
Knowledge of Words: Knowing the sound units that are related to specific meanings.
Knowledge of Sentences: Knowing how to form sentences.

6. Linguistic Competence:
What you know about a language.
Linguistic Performance:
How you use this knowledge in actual speech production and comprehension.

7. Prescriptive Grammar
1762; Bishop Robert Lowth; A Short Introduction to English Grammar with Critical Notes.
I don’t have none 
You was wrong 
Mathilda is fatter than me 
I don’t have any
You were wrong
Mathilda is fatter than I
Many of those rules were based on Latin grammar. Latin was assumed as the respected scientific language in the 15th – 17th Centuries.

8. Descriptive Grammar
1985; Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik; A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language.
Based on a corpus of actual spoken and written English.

9. That’s all for today
See you next week