Issues in Linguistic Research

This subject takes a broad and historically based view of some of the great topics that have preoccupied thinkers in linguistics, and how they interrelate, by juxtaposing the history of ideas on each of a dozen topics with relevant contemporary debates. Topics to be covered include defining properties of language, sign and system, arbitrariness versus constraints on the system, the role of typology, the role of formal modelling of language systems, linguistic relativity, synchrony versus diachrony, linguistics as a science, the linguistic system and the community of users, the boundaries of the language system, functionalism, adaptation and evolution of language systems, categories, classical and otherwise, and language, mind and brain.