This subject will examine the claims for and against the demise of the book, and also supplement these arguments with an historical perspective they lack: the examination of books and printing technology during the Early Modern period of European history, from roughly 1450 to 1800.This class features hypertext student projects in the projects section allowing one to post her or his own interpretation works directly online.

MIT OpenCourseWare provides free, searchable, access to MIT's course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world. This site provides links to all Linguistics and Philosophy courses available (undergraduate and graduate level). For each course accessed, see left column for available resources (e.g. Syllabus, Calendar, Readings, Lecture Notes, Assignments, Study Materials). While there are similarities between the two programs, each are included in this site as seperate e more...

This core-curriculum linguistics class will provide some answers to basic questions about the nature of human language. Topics include the intricate system that governs language, how it is acquired, the similarities and differences among languages, and how spoken (and signed) language relates to written language, among others.

24.901 is designed to give you a preliminary understanding of how the sound systems of different languages are structured, how and why they may differ from each other. The course also aims to provide you with analytical tools in phonology, enough to allow you to sketch the analysis of an entire phonological system by the end of the term. On a non-linguistic level, the couse aims to teach you by example the virtues of formulating precise and explicit descriptive statements; and to develop your sk more...

Covers the major results in the study of first language acquisition concentrating on the development of linguistic structure, including sentence structure and morphology. Universal aspects of development are discussed, as well as a variety of cross-linguistic phenomena. Theories of language learning are considered, including parameter-setting and maturation.

This course focuses on the study of problems concerning our concept of knowledge, our knowledge of the past, our knowledge of the thoughts and feelings of ourselves and others, and our knowledge of the existence and properties of physical objects in our immediate environment.

The course has two main goals: First, to give you a sense of what philosophers think about and why. This will be done through consideration of some perennial philosophical problems, e.g., the existence of God, reason and faith, personal identity and immortality, freewill, moral responsibility, and standards for moral conduct. We will draw on readings by important figures in the history of philosophy as well as contemporary authors. The second goal is to develop your philosophical skills, and yo more...

This course will acquaint you with some of the important results and ideas of the last half - century of research in syntax. We will explore a large number of issues and a large amount of data so that you can learn something of what this field is all about. From time to time, we will discuss related work in language acquisition and processing. The class will emphasize ideas and arguments for these ideas in addition to the the details of particular analyses. At the same time, you will learn the m more...

The course will address the following major issues: (1) the underlying semantic representation of expressions of degree and the linguistic significance of scalar representations (2) the logical form of comparative constructions, and the implications of comparatives for other aspects of the grammar (3) the semantics of degree and the role of scalar representations in grammatical categories other than gradable adjectives.

This course is designed to allow participants to engage in the exploration of the grammatical structure of a language that is unknown to them. The first three to four weeks of the term, our group meetings will explore the basic phonology, morphology and surface syntax for a first pass overview of the language, looking for interesting areas to be explored in more detail later.