B003225 - GENERAL LINGUISTICS

Italian

Faculty of language and natural languages.
Main linguistic domains: phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics.
Language change as it comes out of comparative analysis. Lexical semantics and pragmatics. Advertising and language: tendentious communication and persuasive messages.

1) Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri, La linguistica. In pratica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2007(1), 2014(4)
2) Francesca Casadei, Lessico e semantica, Roma, Carocci, 2003(1), 2015(9)
3) Cecilia Andorno, Che cos'è la pragmatica linguistica, Roma, Carocci, 2005(1), 2015(9)

The learning goal of the course is to give training in the basic theoretical and methodological skills in the field of Linguistics.
Students will develop
- basic knowledge of the concepts of General Linguistics
- basic knowledge of Historical Linguistics and diachronic change concepts
- knowledge of the basic terms used in Linguistics
- skills related to linguistic methods and synchronic analysis, including:
- Phonetics and Phonology
- Morphology
- Syntax
- Semantics and Lexicon
- Pragmatics
- skills related to the linguistic analysis of texts.
The extra-disciplinary goal of the course is to stimulate students
- to develop a conscious use of the academic environment, of the CdS, of the assistance facilities provided to exploit the academic features and to manage student careers
- to develop intellectual participation and effective student-teacher collaboration
- awareness in use of the learning resources provided by both CdS and Scuola

Basic knowledge of Italian grammar.

Class Lessons

Students of D.M. 509 must agree upon the program with the teachers at the beginning of the course.

Students must take an oral examination.

Students may choose to split the examination into two parts by sitting an optional intermediate written test through the Moodle e-learning platform. This intermediate test will consist of a list of multiple choice questions and exercises related to the topics covered in the first part of the course, including
- basic concepts and terms of General Linguistics
- theories, methods and analysis models of Phonetics and Phonology; application of phonetic and phonological analysis; phonetic transcription exercises
- theories, methods and analysis models of Morphology; exercises on the identification of morphemes
- theories, methods and analysis models of Syntax; exercises concerning phrase structure trees.

Students awarded a mark between 18/30 and 30/30 will be admitted to the oral examination, consisting of questions on the topics covered during the second part of the course, including theories, methods and analysis models of Semantics and Lexicon, and Pragmatics.

The examiners will also assess the relevance and coherence of the students’ answers, their communication skills, their capacity for making judgements, their ability to express opinions on a topic in a structured way, their language accuracy and their style.

The final mark will be calculated as the average between the marks obtained in the written and oral examinations.

Students
- who have failed the written examination, or
- who are not satisfied with the mark they have been given in the written examination, or
- who did not take the written examination
must take an oral examination on all the topics covered during the course. This oral interview will include written exercises. In this case too, the relevance and coherence of students’ answers, their communication skills, their capacity for making judgements, their ability to express opinions on a topic in a structured way, their language accuracy and their style will be assessed during the examination.

For students taking the oral examination only, the final mark will be calculated on the basis of the assessments given for all the questions.

Language faculty and natural languages. Classification of the languages performed by genealogical, typological and areal criteria.
Main linguistic domains: phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics. The grammar: grammatical categories. Basic concepts of semiotics.
Lexiacal semantics: perspectives on the lexical meaning; componential analysis and prototypes. Pragmatics: the speech act theory; the Gricean model. Advertising and language: tendentious communication and persuasive messages.