The following materials were developed for an Introduction to Linguistics class taught at the University of Arizona in Fall 2018. This specific course was intended for students who intended to pursue language-related majors, and so is somewhat more detailed than a general survey of linguistics intended for non-majors.
I have not included links to homework assignments or exams on this page because I intend to re-use some of these questions on future assessment materials. However, I have included a list of the assignments I have, and if you are interested in using these resources to structure your own class, please contact me via email and I can send you links to these documents as well.
Note: This course was structured around the 12th edition of Language Files. The structure and topics covered in some lectures was informed by this text and it was used as a source for some lecture examples and practice problems. I have cited all practice problems drawn from this text.
Lesson 1: What is Linguistics?
Lesson 2: Competence vs. Performance, Nature vs. Nurture
Lesson 3: Grammars and Models
Lesson 4: Articulatory Phonetics 1
Lesson 5: Articulatory Phonetics 2
Lesson 6: Acoustic Phonetics
Lesson 7: Phonology 1
Lesson 8: Phonology 2
Lesson 9: Morphology 1 - Basic Morphological Concepts
Lesson 10: Morphology 2 - Morphological Analysis
Lesson 11: Syntax 1 - Basic Syntactic Concepts
Lesson 12: Syntax 2 - Constituency, Categories, and Trees
Lesson 13: Semantics 1 - The Meaning of Words
Lesson 14: Semantics 2 - Compositional Semantics
Lesson 15: Pragmatics 1 - The Role of Context and Conversational Maxims
Lesson 16: Pragmatics 2 - Maxims, Inference, Speech Act Theory, and Presupposition
Lesson 17: Language Acquisition 1 - Theory and Infant Acquisition
Lesson 18: Language Acquisition 2 - Acquiring Words and Sentences & Bilingual Acquisition
Lesson 19: Language and the Brain
Lesson 20: Language Processing 1 - Speech Production
Lesson 21: Language Processing 2 - Lexical Access and Sentence Processing
Lesson 22: Power and Politeness
Lesson 23: Dialectology
Lesson 24: Sociolectal Variation and Discrimination
--Lesson 24a: Dialects and Dialect Stereotypes in Great Britain (remote lesson over Thanksgiving)
Lesson 25: Language Contact and Endangerment
Lesson 26: Language Change
Lesson 27: Language Change 2 + Linguistic Determinism
Lesson 28: Conclusion
I've chosen not to link directly to these resources, since I re-use some of these problems in assessments, but if you're teaching a class or just want to practice, send me an email and I'll send you a link to any of these files as well!
Licensing Statement: All instructional resources on this site are being released under a Creative Commons 2.0 BY-NC license, so you should feel free to use them or remix them, with attribution, if you're preparing your own class!