• The course will introduce you to the concepts and methodologies of historical and comparative linguistics. Historical linguistics studies how and why language changes over time (i.e., diachronic linguistics). It also studies how languages are classified into families (i.e., comparative linguistics and language typology). These two areas are closely entwined and are usually taken to constitute a single field of study.
• We will discuss various types of language change (phonological, morphological, semantic, and syntactic), the linguistic motivation for these changes, and the methods used to investigate them. We will also explore language contact and borrowing, the genealogical classification of languages, and the insights historical linguistics brings to understanding prehistory.
• Each class begins with a themed lecture followed by a practice session where we review examples of different types of language change and practice the comparative method and other techniques for doing linguistic reconstruction.
• Prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics I and II.