The Default Library
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Linguistics

How the world's seven thousand languages work, how they change, how children learn them and how machines model them.

For: anyone who loves languages, anyone learning one, anyone thinking of studying linguistics, and anyone who has wondered why "ghoti" doesn't spell fish.

Shaped by the Linguistic Society of America's guidance on the undergraduate major, the UK QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Linguistics and the core of MIT's Course 24; told with examples from every continent, glossed so anyone can follow, and descriptive rather than prescriptive.

12readings
2.8 hoursof reading
4stages
8 reads · 4 deep dives
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Stage 1

Year 1 · Sounds and words

3 readings · 36 min
  1. 01ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Phonetics and Phonology: The Sounds You Never Knew You Were Choosing

    How speech sounds are made, and the patterns each language makes of them.
  2. 02ReadInteractiveQuiz11 min

    Morphology: How Words Are Built

    How words are built.
  3. 03ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Languages of the World: Seven Thousand Answers to the Same Problem

    Families, types and the diversity of the world's languages.
Stage 2

Year 2 · Structure and meaning

3 readings · 39 min
  1. 04ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Syntax: Sentences Are Trees, Not Strings

    How words combine into sentences.
  2. 05ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Semantics & Pragmatics: What Is Said and What Is Meant

    What sentences mean, and what speakers mean by them.
  3. 06ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Philosophy of Language: What Words Mean and What They Do

    Meaning and reference, from the philosophy side.
Stage 3

Year 3 · Language in time and society

3 readings · 42 min
  1. 07Deep diveInteractiveQuiz17 min

    Historical Linguistics: Sound Laws and the Family Trees They Draw

    How languages change and how we reconstruct their ancestors.
  2. 08ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Sociolinguistics: Nobody Speaks Just the Language

    Dialect, class, identity and language policy.
  3. 09ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Translation & World Literature: Who Carries a Book Across

    Translation, and literature across languages.
Stage 4

Year 4 · Minds and machines

3 readings · 48 min
  1. 10Deep diveInteractiveQuiz16 min

    Language Acquisition: How Children Build a Language

    How children learn language, and what that says about the mind.
  2. 11Deep diveInteractiveQuiz16 min

    Psycholinguistics & the Brain: How a Mind Handles a Sentence

    How the brain produces and understands language.
  3. 12Deep diveInteractiveQuiz16 min

    Computational Linguistics: From Grammars to Language Models

    From grammars to language models.
When you finish

the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) and Glottolog, free; the free Language Files exercises and Essentials of Linguistics (open textbook); the textbooks named at the end of each subject. See also the library's How Large Language Models Actually Work (29/02).

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Start Here: What School Skipped

One evening's reading that covers the things adult life assumes you were taught.