Introduction to Chinese Linguistics

Introduction to Linguistics is one of the foundational courses for the students who are major or are interested in Modern Linguistics. Through the introduction and classroom discussion, students will learn some knowledge of basic theories and concepts and know some main interests of the linguists, which will help the learners go into the interesting world of linguistics and feel eager to explore some topics in this field. Through interpreting the basic theories of linguistics, our course will offer some seminar for the students to think and discuss the similarities and differences between English and Chinese in daily expression and language usage.

The primary content of the course includes the following items: language and its special characteristics; the subjects of linguistic research; the role and functions of linguistics, phonetics, grammar, the relationship and systematic nature of semantics and writing systems; language development and language contact, etc.

The expectation of the course could be very clear, that is, to understand the basic function of language, know some of the theoretical mechanism in linguistics, and enable to use all what we have learned and discussed synthetically to think and analyses some linguistic phenomenon.