Introduction to Language
Compulsory course (3 credits)
Course Outline
Lecturer: Mgr. Martin Mačura, PhD. www.columbus.sk/resource
A. Topics
1. Origins of language: what is language, evolution of language, properties of language, functions of
language (12/4-7, 11/1-30, 9/9-36, 9/210-239, 5/12-29, 13/20-23)
2. Language change (historical linguistics): synchronic and diachronic development, future of English, past
development, language types (natural, artificial, sign, synthetic, analytical agglutinative, polysynthetic
etc.), language groups (9/37-64, 9/137-172, 9/259-290, 8/1-66)
3. Language learning and varieties (psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics): approaches, children, adults,
monolingualism, bilingualism, multilingualism, code-switching, language and thought, accents, dialects,
pidgin, creole, etc. (10/6-20, 6/60-68, 5/148-173)
4. Speech vs. writing (rhetorics, graphetics): Symbols, speech, conversation rules, speech acts and speech
events, public speaking, writing and writing systems (letters), evolution of writing (6/46-59, 6/83-89,
4/115-126, 4/208-241)
5. Language study (linguistics): the science, division, dichotomies, grammar, deep structure, surface
structure, open system, closed system, Chomsky, schools, methods, structuralism etc. (12/47-58, 4/15-27,
2/9-24, 3/10547)
6. Sounds (phonetics and phonology): sounds and supersegmentals, variations, change, phoneme, syllable,
deviations, children (12/8-22, 10/27-46, 5/30-50)
7. Words (morphology, lexicology, etymology, semantics): word classes, inflection, derivation, meaning,
word formation, children, processing etc. (12/22-31, 12/41-46, 10/127-185, 5/73-92)
8. Sentences (syntax): sentence structure etc. (12/32-41, 10/245-348, 5/51-72)
9. Other units (stylistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis): styles, register, stylistic means and devices,
cohesion, coherence, context and cotext, text organization, politeness, deixis, etc. (6/106-119, 3/1060210606, 3/8502-8512)
10. Translation (translatology): approaches, machine translation, computer assisted translation, human
translation, interpreting, translation in Europe, translation in Slovakia (13/23-27, 13/41-47)
B. Requirements and Prerequisites
General dept. rules apply, see www.ff.ukf.sk/kaaa
1. Weekly lecture: the lecture will take place in P6 every Wednesday at 11.00
2. Weekly reading: a selected set of chapters from the recommended literature to the given topic.
3. Final test: A comprehensive probe into the student’s ability to understand and reproduce scientific texts.
The test will be based on the respective reading from the past 10 weeks. It will focus on evaluating
students’ language proficiency, knowledge of the respective subject and their ability to retrieve relevant
information from scientific literature. Each student will be asked 20 unique and specific questions. Failure
to answer the questions adequately (relevance, scope, extent etc.) will result in zero or limited
classification. The maximum number of points a student can earn in the test is 100. If the student scores
less than 70 points, he/she will be failed. If the student earns more than 70 points, the following scale
shall be applied: 70-75 E, 76-81 D, 82-87 C, 88-93 B, 94-100 A
4. Participation – Participation in the lecture is upon students’ discretion and it will not be monitored.
C. Bibliography
1. Bloomfield, Leonard - Language And Linguistics
2. Broderick, John P. - Modern English Linguistics-A Structural And Transformational Grammar
3. Brown, Keith - Encyclopedia Of Language And Linguistics
4. Chao, Yuen Ren - Language And Symbolic Systems
5. Finch, Geoffrey - How To Study Linguistics
6. Freeborn, Dennis - Varieties Of English-An Introduction To The Study Of Language
7. Freeborn, David - From Old English To Standard English. A Course Book In Language Variation Across Time
8. Graddol, David - Future Of English
9. Janson, Tore - Speak- A Short History Of Languages
10. Radford, Andrew - Linguistics An Introduction 2nd ed
11. Searle, John R. - What Is Language-Some Preliminary Remarks
12. Todd, Loreto - An Introduction To Linguistics
13. Peter Newmark – Textbook of Translation