In the first part of the course, students will have an overview of fundamental concepts and notions in general linguistics. In the second part of the course, students will acquire knowledge of current methods in historical linguistics: important aims of the course are to understand, as far as possible, the causes of linguistic changes, at whatever level they occur, and also how such changes spread. Finally, another general subject that will be considered in the course is linguistic reconstruction: this involves methods for reconstructing earlier forms of language, before the advent of written records. We will consider the ways and the techniques that historical linguists use to do this, and some of the related problems.