Kursöversikt

Welcome to EN2121, The Language Instinct Debate, 7.5 hec

The most complex ability that any human being ever acquires is the (implicit) knowledge of a native language. Everyone speaks a language and everyone is interested in language at some level. We all notice different accents and are aware of grammatical mistakes that we and others make. We all understand jokes and play games that use language in clever ways. Language, in other words, is a central part of being human.

The course examines some views, primarily the so-called Chomskyan view, that language is not learned but rather that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. We will also discuss alternative views, i.e. that language is not innate and that children are good at learning languages, mostly because people are good at learning anything that life throws at them. In exploring these opposing views, we discuss the nature of language, how the science of linguistics analyzes language data, and to some extent how language is integrated within culture and history. We also touch on issues such as the basics of syntactic theory, historical linguistics and language change, prescription versus description, cognitive linguistics, linguistic determinism, machine translation, first language acquisition and the origins of language.

Syllabus

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