Università Roma Tre

Linguistics: science of language, science of thought
The history of linguistics; Historical linguistics; General Linguistics
The abilities in the use of language: Speech acts, language implicatures; persuasion. Intonation and kindness; register and familiarity.
Linguistics and modern communication: biased communication; linguistics “tricks” in persuasive messages; hot to divert attention: the grammar of persuasion.
Linguistics and society: rights, deprivation, language varieties
- Linguistics and languages
- Phonetics and phonology. Intonation, illocutionary force, information structure
- Lexicon
- Morphology. Types of morphemes and morphological typology; inflection, word formation: derivation and composition
- Syntax; The structure; head and modifiers; the basic (unmarked) order of elements
- Semantics. Meaning and types of meanings; meaning organization in subtypes and classification (categories and prototypes)
- Pragmatics. Macro-pragmatics; speech acts, conversational implicatures; Micro-pragmatics: the information structure of utterances
- Interfaces between different levels of analysis. The phonology-morphology interfaces: the loss of affixes, metaphonetic phenomena. The syntax-morphology interface: inflection and word order. The syntax-pragmatics interface: marked constructions and salience.
- Language and knowledge
- Language, man and the brain: what are we? Linguage universals; Implicational universals. The explanation of language universals. Two types of memories and the “magic number 7”.
- Diachronic linguistics: history, archaeology, philology. Language change, Phonetic change, morphological change, semantic change. The rules of linguistic change. Words and things: language and cultural reconstruction. The interpretation of texts.

E. Lombardi Vallauri, La linguistica in pratica. Bologna, Il Mulino, 2007.

During the course basic notions of semiotics will be introduced in order to start students in the analysis of language properties. The different levels of grammar will be approached and the inner properties of the relevant discipline. Students will be provided elements of phenetics and phonology, the internal structure of words, the sentential structure (constituency analysis and syntagmatic structure), semantics and pragmatics.
Students attending the classes will be invited to implement the instruments acquired to the languages they study, through practical exercises.
Non-attending students will focus their attention on the application of linguistics to communication in the modern society.

Gaetano Berruto. Corso elementare di linguistica generale. Torino, Utet 1997.