Please note that this class is closed now.
This seven-week Community Classroom course will give you a chance to study language and cognition with the founder of modern linguistics, Professor Noam Chomsky. The course will be co-taught by Professor Chomsky, UA Agnese Nelms Haury Chair and Laureate Professor of Linguistics; Linguistics Regents’ Professor Tom Bever; and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Professor of Cognitive Science, Linguistics and Psychology.
This linguistics course will use language as a lens into the human mind and brain, and will follow and explore the field of “biolinguistics,” the scientific investigation of language and mind that Noam Chomsky has been developing since he founded the program of study 70 years ago. The main theme of Chomsky’s program and the course is that language and other mental abilities are based in a combination of genetic capacities, maturation, experience, physical and computational constraints. Professors Chomsky, Bever, and Piattelli-Palmarini will take turns lecturing, and time will be allotted for discussions on a range of topics that integrate the study of language with research on the mind and brain.
As an adaptation for COVID conditions, this course will be offered online for people to access remotely, with videos available each week on the different topics, along with suggested readings. Participants will view these videos on their own schedule. They can then submit questions and comments for the instructors to address in seven live online sessions.
