Language	AN INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS FOR NON-LINGUISTS
Introductory course	ELISABET ENGDAHL Department of Linguistics, University of Gothenburg
First week	engdahl@ling.gu.se
Course description	This course provides an introduction to the way linguists think and work. The course doesn't presuppose any knowledge of linguistics and is aimed especially at students with a background in mathematics, logic, computer science, psychology or philosophy. Theoretical linguists are trying to device models of how natural languages work. Language is a complex system involving at least meaning (semantics), form (phonology, syntax) and pragmatics. Linguists try to characterise in an explicit way how these dimensions of language need to be represented in order to give an adequate account of language production and comprehension. As in most natural sciences, there is a huge gap between the empirical foundations (in our case data from individual langauges and speakers) to the theoretical models that linguists build in order to account for the way language works. This gap makes it difficult for non-linguists to understand tthe issues that linguists are discussing, since these issues are cast in terms that are heavily dependent on a particular theoretical model. In this course, we will study linguistic methodology and evaluation procedures, discuss whether it makes sense to look for Universal Grammar and hopefully arrive at a better understanding of the way linguists model the interaction between different linguistic subsystems.
Prerequisites	None
Literature	No specific recommendation