From the curricular point of view, General Linguistics intends to offer the institutional bases of the discipline, articulating itself on notions of a general nature, essential to be able to access the various levels of analysis of language (phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic), both in terms of pure description and in the perspective of reconstruction and historical analysis (exemplified above all on the Romance and Indo-European areas).
The following topics will be covered:
- General themes: Notion of language. Meaning and expression. Form and substance.
- Fundamental concepts of linguistics: Sign, phoneme, morpheme, phrase and sentence.
- Fundamental procedures of linguistic analysis: Phonological, morphological and syntactic analysis of modern languages.
- Methods and principles of historical linguistics: Notions of linguistic family, phonetic law, linguistic change (exemplified above all on the Romance and Indo-European fields).
- Application of concepts and methodologies to a corpus of 30 sentences belonging to a fictive language, in order to make it possible for students to practice building a "Grammar" on an absolutely unknown linguistic sample and therefore not susceptible to contamination with grammatical prejudices inherited from the school teaching of "Italian" or other languages known to them.
With regard to the temporal distribution of the didactic commitment dedicated to the various topics, it seems to me that any hypothesis formulated in advance would be devoid of plausibility, as it is not likely to organize a didactic work in the abstract: the time slots will depend on the responses of the learners, answers that by definition depend on the audience of the learners, their characteristics and their intellectual profiles, that is, from elements that today are unknown to me – as to anyone – and consequently it is impossible to make reliable predictions about it. In general, I can only predict that this will go as in all previous years, that is to say that in my intentions I should devote one sixth of the hours to general themes and concepts, one sixth to phonetics, one sixth to phonology, one sixth to morphology, one sixth to syntax and one sixth to historical linguistics, but in reality the learners will cyclically ask me to go back, explain again points of the program, thus nullifying all predictions. And this depends on the fact that the learners, even attending students, do not study at home the program carried out in the classroom, but study only near the exam and realize only a posteriori (perhaps after weeks) that they have misunderstood what was done in the classroom. The problem would be solved if only students were required to take the final exam immediately after the course, with only one date per year, in addition to a second date destined for recovery, and not – as is the case today – to be able to take it on numerous exam dates spread over the entire academic year (and beyond): but the adoption of this solution does not depend on the undersigned (who also hopes for it), but from political choices and academic regulations that go in the opposite direction.

1) R. Simone, Nuovi fondamenti di Linguistica, Milano, McGRAW-HILL, 2013 (capitoli I-XI).
2) A. De Dominicis, Fonologie comparate. Suoni e lingue d’Europa, Cina e mondo arabo, Roma, CAROCCI 2013 (the first four chapters on pp. 1-149: Phonetics + Phonology + Romance languages + Italian; plus a language of your choice - and its language family - among those presented in the volume).
In my opinion, there is no possibility of learning Linguistics without a frontal didactic guide. In general, it does not seem to me that it is possible to learn formalized methods and analysis techniques without a teaching aid consisting of a teacher. Perhaps this is possible in the case of historical or literary disciplines, but Linguistics is not an example of a historical or literary discipline. Consequently, it is not possible for me to indicate - in science and conscience - any supplementary reading for self-taught students. However, non-attending students could do exercises at home on the text by Silvia Luraghi and Anna M. Thornton, Linguistica generale: esercitazioni e autoverifica, Roma: Carocci.