UNIVERSITY OF NIŠ

FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

Spring Term 2015

Lecturer:
Prof. Mihailo Antović, Ph. D.

Lectures:
Thursdays, 12:15-13:45

Instructor:
Vladimir Figar, M.A.

Tutorials:
Group 1: Mondays, 16:15-17:45
Group 2: Mondays, 18:00-19:30

Course web group and website:

http://groups.google.com/group/cognitivelinguistics
http://sites.google.com/site/cognitivelinguisticsnis/
The website and the web group will contain the copies of the lecture slideshows,
class handouts, information about exams, exam results, lectures and tutorials.

Coursebooks:

• (Primary) Jackendoff, R. (1994) Patterns in the Mind, New York: Basic Books.
• (Additional) Pinker, S. (1994) The Language Instinct, New York: William Morrow
And Co.

Requirements and Grading:

a) Practical Test: 30%

Format: 2 practical tasks
b) Theoretical Test: 70%
Format: 4 short essays
 Weekly Schedule

Week 1: Introducing cognitive linguistics; cognition; language; linguistics; types of

signs; combinatorial explosion; branches of linguistics.
Week 2: De Saussurean ‘principles’; linguistic dichotomies: theoretical vs.
applied; macro vs. micro; nature vs. nurture; unconscious vs. conscious;
behaviourism vs. cognitivism; empiricism vs. rationalism.
Week 3: The fundamental arguments; the argument for mental grammar;
patterns; elements of the lexicon; expressive variety; prescriptive
grammar vs. mental grammar; unconscious principles.
Week 4: The argument for innate knowledge; acquisition of concepts; “mother
tongue”; poverty of the stimulus; grammar: universal, mental, generative,
prescriptive.
Week 5: The paradox of language acquisition; the genetic (null) hypothesis;
FOXP2; language – conversion – from thought to sound; functionalism.
Week 6: The mind metaphors; functionalism; ambiguity; linguistic, psycholinguistic
and neurolinguistic experiments; the modularity hypothesis.
Week 7: Phonological structure; phonetics vs. phonology; the structure of speech
sounds; distinctive features; the paradox revisited; phonological
ambiguities.
Week 8: Syntactic structure; syntax vs. phonology; syntax vs. meaning; syntactic
ambiguities.
Week 9: Recursion; long distance dependencies; topicalization; adjective +
“though” construction; the metaphor of switches; sign language:
misconceptions; distinctive features; signs; prosody; grammar.
Week 10: Language acquisition in normal circumstances: nature vs. nurture;
critical Phases; four developmental phases; development in linguistic
subfields
Week 11: Language acquisition in unusual circumstances: specific language
impairment; the critical period hypothesis; feral children.
Week 12: Language acquisition in unusual circumstances: home sign; Pidgin vs.
Creole; apes and language.