L1 or First Language Acquisition

L1 or First Language Acquisition is one of the most researched areas of psycholinguistics. For last forty or so years, researchers have tried to find out how child learns a language, what are the stages in L1 acquisition,  what factor affect child's learning. These slides cover a chapter from The Study of Language by George Yule on L1 Acquisition.

Language and Social Variation (Sociolinguistics)

These slides cover basic topics regarding sociolinguistics e.g. Speech Community, Sociolinguistics, Age and Occupation, Social Dialect or Sociolect, Social Markers, Style and Style Shifting, Slang, Register, Jargon, Speech Accommodation: Convergence and Divergence, Language and Gender, Language and Ethnicity and African American Vernacular English (AAVE).

Language and Regional Variation

These slides are based on a chapter of The Study of Language by George Yule. The topics covered are Dialect, Dialectology, Isogloss and Dialect boundaries, Standard Language, Bilingualism, Diglossia, Language Codification and Standardization, Pidgins and Creoles.

What is Grammar and Its Kinds

These slides cover some very basic concepts regarding grammar: Misconceptions about Grammar, What is Grammar, Traditional Grammar, Weaknesses of Traditional Grammar, The Structuralists and Structuralism, Strengths and Assumptions of Structuralism and Weaknesses of Structuralism with reference to criticism of  Chomsky and TGG grammarians on structuralism.

Behaviourism and Chomsky's Critique on Behaviourism

These slides give a very brief account of the behaviourist theory of psychology, the application of this theory to linguistics, and the critique/ criticism of Chomsky on Behaviourism as a mentalist. Various online sources are consulted to prepare this lecture.

Historical Linguistics and Philology

This lectures contains introductory material on philology, historical linguistics, proto-languages. The short history of English language is also included. The book used is The Study of Language by George Yule.

Semantics Theoris or Theories of Meaning

There are various theories / schools of thought / points of view to see the phenomenon called 'meaning'. These slides try to cover some of these theories of meaning. Mainly Referential Theory of Meaning, Functional Approach / Theory of Meaning, Componential Analysis Approach, and Semantic Field Theory etc. are discussed. Some traits, assumptions and weak points for each theory are also described. This is a less than perfect attempt to produce a lecture on this topic, as semantics has always been a less interesting area for me. But, even then I am hoping it can benefit a lot of people.