Legal Studies Program 202 - Origins And Evolution of Language

Institution:

Macalester College

Subject:

Description:

In 1870, the Linguistic Society of Paris decreed that all papers on the topic of the origin of speech were inadmissible. In recent years, speculations about the evolutions of language have become respectable once again, as attested by the number of international conferences on the topic, and journals devoted to it. Although we are only a little closer to a description of "proto-human" than we were back in 1870, it is now universallyrecognized that there are no primitive languages, and that neither the comparative method of historical linguistics nor internal reconstruction can allow us to reconstruct the earliest human languages (although they still allow us to make inferences about Proto-Indo-European and other ancient extinct languages). But there have been advances in our understanding of the neurological substrate for linguistic ability, communication in (some) other species, and in the application of the uniformitarian hypothesis: the processes we now observe in different kinds of language change are themselves capable of producing all the recognized "design features" ofhuman language out of earlier structures in which these features are lacking. Prerequisite: Linguistics 100 or 301. Every three years. Next offered Spring 2010. (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

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