Language

HUMAN 16 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

What is Language? Is language “a uniquely human gift”? Is it central to the human experience, as many have suggested? Why do some writers say that Language is what “makes us human?” Do other animals have Language? Do AI models “know a language”? What does it even mean to ask questions like these? Do languages vary from one another without limit? Or is there an underlying common core beneath the surface diversity? How similar are languages across modalities (signed/spoken)? Do the languages we know determine the thoughts we can think? Do we think (only) in language? Are there right and wrong ways of speaking? Who decides? What’s the difference between a language and a dialect? Where do our words come from? It’s said that more than half of the world’s languages and maybe as many as 90% are “endangered” and may no longer be spoken by the end of the century. Are they “unsuited to the modern world”’ or are other factors at play? Are some languages more logical than others? Students in this course will be exposed to classical and new questions about language, and will gain practical skills in linguistic analysis along with an appreciation of how one can approach these questions analytically. Our aim is not to present answers, but to foster critical thinking in order to understand on the one hand what such questions mean, and on the other, how one might approach them and why various answers have been given from a diversity of perspectives from Linguistics, Philosophy, Languages and Literatures, Psychology, Computer Science, Anthropology, and related fields in the humanities and sciences. This course can also be used to satisfy any introductory prerequisites for more advanced coursework in Linguistics, and the distributional requirement in Arts & Humanities.