This course is intended as a first contact with the principles and methods of linguistic analysis. Involving an introduction to linguistics, this course is aimed at students who are just beginning French linguistic studies as well as to advanced-level students willing to improve and systematize their knowledge by means of a structured reflection on some fundamental concepts of general linguistics.

An introduction to a complex discipline can be dealt with using different approaches. While proposing a view of the organization and functioning of human language and presenting the main notions of modern linguistics and its principal research fields, we will divide the present course into four broad areas: phonetics and phonology, morphology, lexical semantics, and semantics of the enunciation (enunciative and pragmatic approach).

No previous knowledge of linguistics is required.