LING 385-004: Special Topic: Historical Linguistics&LangChg (Spring 2010)

Semester Details: All linguists agree that languages change, but they do not necessarily agree about how or why such change occurs. Linguists have also disagreed about whether linguistic systems should be studied primarily as synchronic or diachronic phenomena. In this course, we will privilege the view that linguistic systems cannot be completely understood from a purely synchronic perspective and will concern ourselves with the ways in which such systems have arisen. We will begin by surveying types of change which can affect linguistic systems (e.g., phonetic-phonological, morphosyntactic, lexico-semantic, and pragmatic), illustrated using data from a wide range of languages. We will also explore how one can know about language states and changes of the past, reviewing and critiquing methods of linguistic reconstruction (e.g. the comparative method) and methods for the interpretration of written records from the past. As the course progresses, we will gradually shift emphasis from the problems of describing and classifying changes (past and present) to that of explaining change. In this regard, we will review the attempts of different schools to explain innovation and change, including attention to an array of overlapping causal factors: structural (certain systems seem to favor certain types of change), physiological (e.g. the impact of articulation), cognitive (e.g. language acquisition, metaphor), socio-psychological (e.g. accommodation theory), social (e.g. language and dialect contact, social networks), and cultural (e.g. prestige, standard ideology).

Students will be expected to complete either a) a research project or b) a research proposal.