DVD.

In English.

Taught by John McWhorter.

Editor, Rich Bernett.

Collective title, part numbers & lecture titles from disc menus. Disc numeration from disc labels.

Course guidebook includes an outline for each lecture, a timeline, a glossary, biographical notes, and a bibliography.

"As an introduction to linguistic science, this course's main goal is to show that speaking is more than a matter of knowing words and putting them in order. Linguists have discovered that language is an intricate hierarchy of systems, ever changing in surface appearance but ever consistent in organizational essence"--Course guidebook.

Part one: disc 1. What is linguistics? -- The sounds of language : consonants -- The other sounds : vowels -- In the head versus on the lips -- How to make a word -- The Chomskyan Revolution -- disc 2. Deep structure and surface structure -- The on-off switches of grammar -- Shades of meaning and semantic roles -- From sentence to storytelling -- Language on its way to becoming a new one -- Recovering languages of the past.

Part two: disc 3. Where grammar comes from -- Language change from old English to now -- What is an impossible language? -- How children learn to speak -- How we learn language as adults -- How you talk and how they talk -- disc 4. How class defines speech -- Speaking differently, changing the language -- Language and gender -- Languages sharing the world : bilingualism -- Languages sharing a sentence : code-switching -- The rules of conversation.

Part three: disc 5. What is this thing called language? -- Speech as action -- Uses of talk from culture to culture -- Does language channel thought? : the evidence -- Does language channel thought? : new findings -- Is language going to the dogs? -- disc 6. Why languages are never perfect -- The evolution of writing -- Writing systems -- Doing linguistics : with a head start -- Doing linguistics : from the ground up -- The evolution of language.