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Historical Linguistics

Analytical Thinking

Course Description

Traditional methods of modeling language change and diversification and investigating the historical development of linguistic structures are practiced, with examples from several different language families. Various kinds of possible lexical, phonological, and morphosyntactic changes are investigated in relation to modern linguistic theory.

Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
In general, expectations for graduate students are higher, with more stringent standards for grading. Additional requirements for graduate students will include some combination of the following: (1) additional required reading, including original scholarly research; (2) longer and more complex written assignments, which demonstrate a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of concepts and theoretical issues introduced in the course; (3) in-class presentations; (4) a final research paper, which should include a literature review and conform to professional standards in the discipline in terms of organization, formatting, argumentation, and citations. If undergraduates are also assigned a final research paper, theirs will be shorter and will not require a thorough literature review.

Athena Title

Historical Linguistics

Prerequisite

LING 3060

Semester Course Offered

Offered every odd-numbered year.

Grading System

A - F (Traditional)

Student learning Outcomes

  • At the end of the course, students will be able to classify and systematically model structural and lexical change when comparing an earlier stage of a language to a later stage of the language.
  • At the end of the course, students will be able to utilize historical principles to assess the appropriate approach to analyzing data.
  • At the end of the course, students will be able to employ models of language diversification to explain the distribution of variant linguistic forms found in a population.
  • At the end of the course, students will be able to analyze data by comparing related forms (either within a single language or between related languages) to propose likely precursors (i.e., to reconstruct a hypothetical ancestral form).

Topical Outline

  • 1) Lexical Change (borrowing and semantic change)
  • 2) Phonetic and Phonological Change (Sound Laws and the Neogrammarian Hypothesis)
  • 3) Morphosyntactic Change (Reanalysis and Grammaticalization)
  • 4) Models of Language Diversification (Family Tree vs Wave Theory Models)
  • 5) Reconstruction (The Comparative Method and Internal Reconstruction)
  • 6) Language Variation and Typological Critiques of the Regularity in Historical Processes

Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes

Analytical Thinking

The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.


Syllabus

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