Introduction to the scientific study of language: The sounds of language; word and sentence structure; semantics and pragmatics; discourse and conversational speech; the social and cultural functions of language; language change and the reconstruction of languages at earlier stages.
5
UnitsOptional
Grading1, 2, 3
PasstimeNone
Level LimitLetters and science
CollegeLecture
Sections
Weekly quizzes you could retake until you get 100%. Midterm and Final aren't a big portion of your grade so even if you fail both you'll pass by doing all the small assignments. Professor is nice and funny but the class is just confusing if you don't really care about linguistics. Definitely read the assigned textbook (which you can find online).
As someone uninterested in linguistics, this class managed to hold my attention. Shout out to Noam Chomsky. Unfortunately, the textbook was a dry, protracted, loathsome work. Some of the chapters were void of information like pragmatics and discourse. Others were a jumbled mess of crucial definitions and concepts. Cool professor. Lame book.
Manageable workload, just get a head start on studying for midterm/final because there are a lot of concepts to learn. Very nice professor and interesting material in the lectures...recommend attending because he doesn't post full slides and his explanations are very helpful.
While this class is not difficult in terms of course material, this prof just makes his content and concepts so boring and unmotivating to learn. I cannot understate just how boring and underwhelming this class was. If you take this class beware that you will not find the concepts interesting one bit, but you will pass! So....
Prof. Kennedy is great. The workload is manageable and the lectures are engaging (mostly, there are a few boring parts). My only complaint is that there are no practice tests available and there seemed to be a bit of miscommunication b/w him and the TAs about what to prioritize reviewing for the tests.
Kennedy is a nice guy, this is a fine class. Boring if you don't care about ling as a subject, but easy homework. His exams are no longer online though, which means u have to pay attention. Relatively easy, but ur TA can skew that the other way if ur unlucky. Nice Area C requirement, but nothing extraordinary. He's funny n pretty sassy too.