Legal Studies Program 201 - Historical Linguistics

Institution:

Macalester College

Subject:

Description:

Languages are constantly changing. The English written by Chaucer 600 years ago is now very difficult to understand without annotation, not to mention anything written a few centuries before that. This course investigates the nature of language change, how to determine a language's history, its relationship to other languages and the search for common ancestors or "proto-languages." We will discuss changes at variouslinguistic levels: sound change, lexical change, syntactic change and changes in word meaning over time. Although much of the work done in this field involves Indo-European languages, we will also look at change in many other language families. This is a practical course, most of class time will be spent DOING historical linguistics, rather than talking about it. We will be looking at data sets from many different languages and trying to make sense of them. In the cases where we have examples of many related languages, we will try to reconstruct what the parent language must have looked like. Prerequisite: either Linguistics 100 (Introduction to Linguistics) or 104 (Sounds of Language). Every three years. Next offered Fall 2011. (4 credits)

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.macalester.edu

Phone Number:

(651) 696-6000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

The Course Profile information is provided and updated by third parties including the respective institutions. While the institutions are able to update their information at any time, the information is not independently validated, and no party associated with this website can accept responsibility for its accuracy.