Language Across Time

This course takes as its starting point the fact that all languages change over time. It explores explanations and motivations for change across different linguistic domains, and introduces students to cross-linguistic tendencies of language change and the linguistic and socio-cultural factors that underpin language continuity and change. Understanding language change forms the basis for learning how to reconstruct the linguistic past and classify languages into families. Both traditional and innovative theories and methodologies of language classification are shaped by the study of two large language families: Indo-European, encompassing languages from Ireland in western Europe to India and Bangladesh in South Asia; and Austronesian, which spans Asia and the Pacific, from Taiwan to Easter Island. Students will learn about the role of these two language families in past and on-going developments in the field of historical linguistics, and in our understanding of how linguistic reconstruction contributes to reconstructing the non-linguistic human past.