给本科生开设语言学课程不是件容易的事情。我们的学生在中学、大学十几年的英语学习过程中，并没有机会接触语言学，他们对语言学的印象就是“那是讲授枯燥的语法规则的课程”。很多学生抱着这种先人为主的偏见无可奈何地走进语言学课堂（因为在北外英语学院，这是英语专业的必修课），从一开始就将脑袋锁起来，拒不接受任何信息。所以教师在课程之初需要花费很多心思，不动声色地让学生竖起耳朵、张开眼睛、开动大脑。只有在学生解除了戒备和抗拒之后，他才会愿意接受课堂上老师传授的知识，进而参与到互动活动中，通过自己的努力去感受语言学的魅力。

Chapter 1 Properties of Language
　1 Introduction－Nature or Nurture?
　2 The Nature of Language
　　2.1 Creativity
　　2.2 Arbitrariness of linguistic signs
　　2.3 Duality
　　2.4 Displacement
　　2.5 Structure-dependence
　3 Linguistic Competence and Linguistic Performance
　4 Descriptive Grammar and Prescriptive Grammar
　5 Summary
　Exercises
　References
Chapter 2 The Structures of Labguage
　1 Introduction
　　1.1 Levels of linguistic organization
　　1.2 How many levels are there?
　　1.3 Evidence of structures
　2 Patterns of Speech Sounds: Phonology
　3 The Words of Language: Morphology
　　3.1 What is a morpheme?
　　3.2 Derivational morphology
　　3.3 Inflectional morphology
　4 Sentence Structures:Syntax
　 4.1 Word order
　4.2 Grammaticality judgment
　 4.3 Ambiguity
　4.4 Recursiveness
　5 Summary
　Exercises
　References
Chapter 3 Meaning of Language
　1 Meaning in the Objective World
　 1.1 Arbitrariness and iconicity
　1.2 Linguistic relativity and determinism
　 1.3 The logical approach to language meaning
　2 Meaning in the Language System
　 2.1 The many meanings of a word
　2.2 Some well-known word relations
　 2.3 Componential analysis
　2.4 Meaning beyond words
　3 Summary
　Exercises
　References
Chapter 4 Origins of Language
　1 Introduction
　2 Defining theTopic
　　2.1 The origin, the Origins or origins of language?
　　2.2 Speech or written language?
　　2.3 Origins of language in general or origins of specific languages?
　　2.4 The meanings of the word origin
　　2.5 Where do we look for evidence?
……
Chapter 5 Lagnuage in Use:The Pragmatic Perspective
Chapter 6 Language and Power
Chapter 7 Language and Gender
Chapter 8 First Language Acquisition
Chapter 9 Second Language Acquisition
Chapter 10 Language and the Brain
Chapter 11 Language,Metaphor and Thought