LING-UA 1-005
Professor Gary Thoms
Monday and Wednesday 11:00-12:15
Room 803, Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South
Office hours: Wednesdays 12.30-2.30pm or by appointment, room 412, 10 Washington Pl (Department of Linguistics)
LING-UA 1-006
TA: Alex Warstadt (warstadt@nyu.edu)
Wednesdays, 3:30PM - 4:45PM
Location: room 104, 10 Washington Place
Office hours: Wednesdays, 3:30-5:00pm or by appointment, room 409, 10 Washington Place
LING-UA 1-007
TA: Sora Yin (sora.heng.yin@nyu.edu)
Thursdays, 4:55PM - 6:10PM
Location: Room LL25, 7 E 12th St (Fairchild Building)
Office hours: Thursdays, 2:30-4:00pm or by appointment, room 507, 10 Washington Place
An Introduction to Language, 11th Edition
Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams
ISBN-13: 9781337559577
ISBN-10: 1337559571 Available used (possibly) and new at the NYU Bookstore, to buy or rent
Also available as an ebook, to buy or rent
The 9th or 10th edition may also work, but use at your own risk.
This course is an introductory survey of the field of linguistics—the scientific study of language. During the semester, we will look at questions like the following: Is speaking an instinctual or a learned behavior? Why do children acquire language so much faster and easier than adults, and what are the stages of acquisition? What do the native speakers of a language know about the language’s word structure, sentence structure, sentence meaning, and pronunciation? How is language processed in the brain? How and why did language evolve into such a complex system? How is language affected by social class and race?
The course will approach these questions from a scientific perspective, incorporating methodologies from mathematics and logic, as well as the social sciences (such as psychology and sociology). The course will not offer a humanities perspective on these questions, such as studied in the domains of critical theory, comparative literature, or rhetoric.
This course will provide you with the necessary background to continue your studies in linguistics at a more advanced level if you choose to. It satisfies the Introductory Course requirement for Linguistics majors and is a prerequisite for some of the other courses. Language is a CORE exemptor for CAS students; it satisfies the Societies and Social Sciences course requirement. The NYUClasses website will be used for official announcements.