About this course
Linguistics 202/Linguistic Variation and Language Change is an introduction to the analysis and description of language change, relationships among languages, and types of linguistic structure.
Major questions to be explored in this course include:
- How and why do languages change over time?
- How can the linguistic history of a language or language family be studied?
- How does variation in a linguistic community relate to language change over time?
Goals and objectives
- Be able to explain some of the reasons why languages change
- Be able to explain some of the mechanisms for how languages change
- Understand how work in historical linguistics informs and is informed by other areas of linguistics, including:
- Phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, (lexical) semantics
- Language acquisition, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics
- Be able to apply the tools of historical linguistics to understand and analyze language data
- Be able to critically evaluate claims about language change and language relationships, distinguishing plausible from implausible proposals
Required readings
- Textbook: Crowley & Bowern (2010), An Introduction to Historical Linguistics (4th
edition only)
Available at the campus bookstore at the beginning of the Fall 2012 semester - Other required readings may be distributed in class or online