Unit LINGUISTICS
- Course
- Humanities
- Study-unit Code
- GP004898
- Curriculum
- Moderno
- CFU
- 12
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2021
- Offered
- 2021/22
- Type of study-unit
- Obbligatorio (Required)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa integrata
LINGUISTICS (MODULE 1)
| Code | GP004903 |
|---|---|
| CFU | 6 |
| Teacher | Alberto Calderini |
| Teachers |
|
| Hours |
|
| Learning activities | Base |
| Area | Filologia, linguistica generale e applicata |
| Academic discipline | L-LIN/01 |
| Type of study-unit | Obbligatorio (Required) |
| Language of instruction | Italian |
| Contents | Introduction to linguistics. Semiotic approach. Linguistic variation. Phonetics. Phonology. Prosody. Morphology. |
| Reference texts | G. Basile, F. Casadei, L. Lorenzetti, G. Schirru, A.M. Thornton, Linguistica generale, Bologna, Carocci, 2010 [isbn 9788843048908] G. Berruto, M. Cerruti, La linguistica. Un corso introduttivo, Torino, UTET 2017 [isbn 9788860084835] N. Grandi, Fondamenti di tipologia linguistica, Roma, Carocci, 2006 [isbn 9788843073191] |
| Educational objectives | The courses of Glottologia and General Linguistics introduce students to the scientific study of human language, which they actually approach for the first time. They aim to guide them towards a general awareness of the nature and functioning of language, and to provide them with more specific knowledge of both the theoretical and methodological foundations of its scientific study and the structural levels in which it is articulated. The module starts with an overview of the epistemological peculiarities of the discipline accompanied by an outline of the history of studies up to recent approaches. It continues with the essential consideration of language within the domain of semiotics, and with an examination of the broad phenomenology of linguistic variation in each of the dimensions in which it occurs. Finally, it deals with the phonic, phonemic and morphological levels. |
| Prerequisites | none |
| Teaching methods | Classroom lectures |
| Other information | Non-attending students are required to contact the teacher to plan an exam program. |
| Learning verification modality | Oral exam; middle-course oral text at the end of Module 1 |
| Extended program | 1. Introduction to Linguistics: general characters of the scientific study of human language. Notes on the history of linguistics. Overview of the precursors from the Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century. The discovery of the comparative method and the debut of scientific linguistics. Characteristics of nineteenth-century reconstructive comparative historical linguistics. Saussure and the birth of synchronic linguistics. 2. Human language as a semiotic code. Semiosis and sign; classification of signs; code; communication process and models (linguistic and other types); semiotic properties and classification of codes: continuity vs. discretion, arbitrariness vs. iconicity, combinability, articulation, sequentiality vs. simultaneity, positionality, productivity; double articulation; other properties; essentials on zoosemiotics. 3. Linguistic variation. Translingual variation: world languages and classification approaches. Genetic classification: notion of linguistic relatedness, comparative method and heuristic validity of the determination of relatedness; rudiments of historical-linguistic reconstruction with examples from the Italic branch of the Indo-European family, i.e. from the Romance dialectology. Survey of the main families. Areal classification: European languages, Balkan languages league, theoretical notions and case studies of phenomena. Typological classification; universals of language and limits to linguistic variation (and arbitrariness). Intralinguistic variation: linguistic community, repertoire and communicative competence, diachronic and synchronic variation, axes of synchronic variation, internal varieties of a language. Dialect variation; Italian dialects. Interlinguistic variation: contact, interference. Bi- and multilingualism, diglossy. 3. The phonetic-phonological level. Phonetics and phonology. Articulatory phonetics: phonatory tract and mechanism of phonation; continuous-discrete relationship; IPA alphabet; classification of speech sounds: vowels: basic contrast and accessory contrasts; consonants: differentiating factors; modification of sounds. Acoustic phonetics: acoustic characteristics of sounds and linguistic correlates: accent, tone and tonality, quantity (> prosodic elements). Phonology: phoneme, phonemic repertoire, allophony, distribution, phonemic oppositions and their classification, neutralization, natural segment classes and distinctive feature. The syllable as a phonological unit: structure, universal restrictions and differences between languages in syllabification, sonority hierarchy, sonority sequencing, maximal onset principle; syllabic peculiarities of / s /. Prosodic elements and their relevance: stress, types of stress, tone and tonality, distinctive vs. expressive value; tonal languages; elements of tonology. 4. The morphological component. The notion of "word" and the difficulty of an unitary definition of such a unit; criteria for determining the word. Morpheme, allomorphy, types of proper allomorphy, morphophonological interface, suppletivism; models of approach to morphology; character of the morphological process; functions of morphology: lexicon and semantics, syntax; classification of types of morpheme and morphological processes (morphological techniques). Morphological typology: synthesis and fusion indices, morphological types. Non-concatenative morphology, Prosodic Morphology, interlinguistic case studies. |
LINGUISTICS (MODULE 2)
| Code | GP004904 |
|---|---|
| CFU | 6 |
| Teacher | Alberto Calderini |
| Teachers |
|
| Hours |
|
| Learning activities | Base |
| Area | Filologia, linguistica generale e applicata |
| Academic discipline | L-LIN/01 |
| Type of study-unit | Obbligatorio (Required) |
| Language of instruction | Italian |
| Contents | Lexicon. Semantics. Pragmatics. Grammatical categories |
| Reference texts | G. Basile, F. Casadei, L. Lorenzetti, G. Schirru, A.M. Thornton, Linguistica generale, Bologna, Carocci, 2010 [isbn 9788843048908] G. Berruto, M. Cerruti, La linguistica. Un corso introduttivo, Torino, UTET 2017 [isbn 9788860084835] N. Grandi, Fondamenti di tipologia linguistica, Roma, Carocci, 2006 [isbn 9788843073191] |
| Educational objectives | The courses of Glottologia and General Linguistics introduce students to the scientific study of human language, which they actually approach for the first time. They aim to guide them towards a general awareness of the nature and functioning of language, and to provide them with more specific knowledge of both the theoretical and methodological foundations of its scientific study and the structural levels in which it is articulated. The module continues from the Glottology Module 1 and provides students with specific knowledge of the functioning of the lexicon, the grammatical relations, the level of meaning and the pragmatic communicative macro-level. |
| Prerequisites | Glottologia Module 1 |
| Teaching methods | Class-lectures |
| Other information | Non-attending students are required to contact the teacher to plan an exam program. |
| Learning verification modality | Final oral exam |
| Extended program | 1. The Meaning. Theoretical approaches to meaning; extra-linguistic reality, cognition and linguistic meaning. Types of meaning. Lexical semantics: classification of meaning relationships: synonymy, polysemy, homonymy, hypo- / hyperonymy, incompatibility; lexematic structures: lexical solidarities, lexical classes, lexical fields; semantic sphere, semantic family; semantic features: compositional semantics; prototypes semantics. Phrasal semantics: compositionality, presupposition, truth values and formal logic. 2. Pragmatics: the communicative level. Sentence and utterance, propositional content and informational value; affecting elements and factors: context, non-segmental linguistic features and paralinguistic elements, speech acts, deixis. The deictic categories. Non-literal use of linguistic expressions and expectation mechanisms, conversational implicatures, principles of H.P. Grice. The information structure of the discourse: organization of information in terms of knowledge (data / new structure), topic / comment structure, focus, types of focuses, background and foreground; triple organization of the discourse: semantic roles, pragmatic roles, syntagmatic structure and grammatical relationships; strategies and resources for the expression of the information structure: phonological-structural interface, morphological resources vs. lexical-syntactic; syntax-dominant vs. pragmatics-dominant languages. 3. Lexicon. Parts of speech and word classes. Organization of the lexicon. 4. Syntax. Argumental structure and valence of the predicate. Syntagma and related typology. Casing mechanisms. Typology of sentences. Syntactic typology. 5. Grammatical categories. Morphological expression vs. lexical-syntactic expression. Categories covered vs. discoveries. Number, person, gender, time, aspect, diathesis, modes and modality, case. Alignment systems. Locative cases. Formation and development of categories in the Latin-Romance diachrony. Agreement. Expression of definiteness. 6. Text and textuality. Text. Constitutive factors, coherence and cohesion. Textual type. |