24.900  Introduction to Linguistics

Fall 2004

Instructor: David Pesetsky

TAs: Marta Abrusan, Seth Alfred Michael Cable, Martina Gracanin, Sarah Hulsey

Lecture:  TR2.30-4  (4-237)        

Goals of the Class: 

This class will provide some answers to basic questions about the nature of human language. Throughout the course, we will be learning (in many different ways) that human language is a fascinating, surprisingly intricate ¿ yet law-governed! ¿ mental system.

In the first 2/3 of the class, we will study some core aspects of this system in detail. In the last part of the class, we will use what we have learned to address a variety of other questions ¿ in including how dialects arise, how languages change over time, how language is processed by the brain and what we know (more accurately, what we don't know) about the evolution of language.

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