Language and Mind

This is an intro level course in linguistics as a cognitive science that satisfies the philosophical reasoning requirement general education requirement at UConn.

The course itself is usually organized using HuskyCT (UConn's BlackBoard implementation). I have created this webpage to facilitate sharing of materials with other instructors. I have not included exams, just in case students stumble upon this page.

The course consists of two lectures per week, and one discussion section. The lecture slides are below. The discussion sections are created by graduate teaching assistants, so are not included here. In some years I have offered make-up assignments for students who miss discussion section. Those are included below too.

Unit I - The nature of linguistic knowledge

Lecture	topic	Make-up assignments
1	Introduction
2	Phonemes
3	Articulatory features	Assignment 1
4	Phonology
5	Morphology	Assignment 2
6	Lexical access
7	Syntax	Assignment 3
8	Principles and Parameters	Assignment 4

Unit II - The acquisition of linguistic knowledge

Lecture	topic	Make-up assignments
9	The logical problem of language acquisition
10	Acquisition of phonemes	Assignment 5
11	Acquisition of Morphemes
12	Acquisition of Syntax
13	The critical period	Assignment 6
14	Williams Syndrome and Specific Language Impairment	Assignment 7

Unit III - The analysis of the linguistic world around us

Lecture	topic	Make-up assignments
15	Philosophy of science
16	Language diversity
17	Language prejudice	Assignment 8
18	Introduction to the brain
19	Language and the brain	Assignment 9
20	Sign languages
21	Language death and language genesis	Assignment 10
22	Animal communication	Assignment 11