Aims:
to shape theoretical and practical ideas of the science of linguistics;
to build understanding of linguistic concepts and terms;
to lay the foundation for advanced study of different branches of linguistics.

Learning Outcomes:
On successful completion of this course of study students should be able to:
• outline the major streams of modern linguistic research and its correlation to other subjects;
• compare and contrast categories, gender and aspect concepts relating to the language;
• apply general linguistic concepts to specific issues of linguistics
• employ the skills of linguistic analysis;
• use scientific and reference literature; obtain, store and process linguistic information;
• apply theoretical knowledge in academic and professional activities.

CONTENT

Linguistics as a science.

Introduction to linguistics as a discipline. The subject of linguistics. Definition of language. Structure and system of linguistics. General and special linguistics. Methods of studying and describing linguistic units and categories. External and internal linguistics. The main linguistic disciplines: phonetics, lexicology, grammar, stylistics, comparative typology, history of the language. Complex disciplines (sociolinguistics, ethnical linguistics, psychological linguistics, neurolinguistics, mathematical linguistics, etc.)

Tetrachotomy: language – thinking – speech – communication. Language and speech. Social aspect of speaking.

Language and thinking. The role of language in shaping and communicating the idea. Social function of the language and cognitive activity; national specific features of the language.

Language as a social phenomenon.

Language as a social phenomenon. Nature and essence of a language. Functions and features of language. Language as a social and personal possession. Two-aspect functional nature of language: a tool of shaping ideas and a tool of exchanging ideas. Theories of language origin. Onomatopoeia and interjection theories. Social theories. Marxist theory of language and conscience origin. Biological factors of speaking; organs of speech and brain development. The role of gestures and mimics in conscience and language origin. Transition from inarticulate speech to articulate.

Patterns of historical language development. Objective character of language development. Internal and external factors of language development. Irregularity of language development. Evolution and development of language. Spontaneity and consciousness of language development. Connection between language development and social history. Specific features in developing phonetics, vocabulary and grammatical structure.

Language and society. Forms of language existence. Literary language as the basic form of language existence. Norm. Territorial and social differentiation of language. Dialects and social variants.

Language as a system and structure.

Sign character of language. Linguistic sign. F. de Saussure ideas of linguistic sign. Semiotic aspect of linguistics. Linguistics and semiotics: aspects, signals and signs; sign situation; communicative signs such as signals, symbols, substitutes. Types of signs and sign units. Phonemes as signal signs; morphemes as structural signs; nominative and communicative language units. Artificial languages and signal systems.

Language as a system and structure. Concepts of system and structure. Structural relations in language. Form and meaning. Asymmetry of a language sign. Syntagmatic, paradigmatic and hierarchical relations in language.

Phonetic structure of language.

The concept of phonetic structure. Major issues of phonetics. Speech sounds. Acoustic, articulatory and functional aspects of speech sounds. Classification of speech sounds. Phonetic segmentation of speech: sound, syllable, tact, phrase. Syllable and syllabic division. Stress. Word accent. Phrase accent. Intonation and prosody.

Sound interaction in speech. Phoneme. Phoneme and its variants. Phonemic oppositions. Neutralization of phonemes. Differential and integral phoneme features. Moscow and Petersburg phonological schools.

Grammatical structure of language.

Grammar as a science. Major issues of grammar. Grammatical meaning of word. Grammatical and lexical meanings of words. Main ways of expressing grammatical meanings. Grammatical form and grammatical category. Morphology and syntax as two components of grammar. Grammatical aspects of morpheme, word, word combination, sentence, and text. Parts of speech and lexical and grammatical aspects.

Syntax. Word combination. Classification of word combinations. Sentence. Simple sentence, its grammatical and actual segmentation. Types of sentences. Classification of sentences according to their structure. Complex sentence.

Lexical structure of language.

Word as an object of linguistic study. Word as a language unit. The main characteristics of word. Word form and its semantic meaning. Word definition. Lexeme and sememe. Semantics as a meaning science. Theories of word meaning. Lexical meaning of word. Denotative and significative meaning of word. Types of lexical meanings. Polysemy of words. Direct and indirect meanings of words. Homonyms, synonyms, antonyms. Taboo words.

Etymology of word. Terms. Phraseology. National and cultural specifics of phraseological units.

Writing.

Writing as reflection of speech. Types of writing. Origin and development of writing. Development of graphics. Phonemic, ideographic, prosodic aspects of written representation of speech.

Worldview.

Linguistic and conceptual worldview. Concept sphere and mentality. Human factor in language. Universals. Metaphors in creating worldview. Theory of linguistic relativity. Lacunarity in language.