TTh 4:00-5:50 – PCAT 138

Jeff Conn                      connjc@pdx.edu                 503-725-4099                    East Hall 241

Office Hours: Tues 12:30-2:30 & by appointment              webpage:  http://web.pdx.edu/~connjc/

Course description

 

Historical linguistics deals with how languages change over time. The study of individual words is, of course, an important component of this study, but represents a relatively minor component of change in terms of the overall grammar of a language. In addition to changes in the lexicon, we will look at sound change as well as changes in morphology and syntax; each of these grammatical sub-components can be considered evolutionary systems in and of themselves. Equally as important to the study of language change is the methodology used. Some say linguistics began with the work of the Brothers Grimm and the Neogrammarians, but much has changed in the analysis of language and how it changes since that time. Much has been learned about the relevance of social factors in language change as represented in the work of William Labov and his co-workers. Particularly important has been the study of pidgins and creoles, where change is telescoped and thus more susceptible to observation and analysis. The most important question we will consider is why languages change, a perhaps unanswerable question. Although we will be using English for most of our examples, we will also consider change in languages unrelated to English. In addition to the examples discussed in the text, graduate students will introduce the class to language groups genetically and areally distant from Germanic and even Indo-European.

 

The computer labs should be equipped with some IPA font or another in Microsoft Word, but you can download them for free at:

http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/Lang/silfonts.html

Or here: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/fonts.htm

For extra Phonetics help, visit Peter Ladefoged’s website: http://phonetics.ucla.edu/

 

Required Text

Campbell, Lyle. 2004. Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (2nd Ed). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Recommended Texts

Hock, Hans Heinrich. 1986. Principles of Historical Linguistics. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. (Not in Bookstore - A useful reference volume, covers everything)

Joseph, Brian D. and Janda, Richard D. (Editors).  2005.  The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change, vol. 1: Internal Factors. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Labov, William. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change, vol. 2: Social Factors. Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Final grades are determined on the following basis:

 

Undergrads

Grads

 

10%

10%

Class participation

30%

25%

Problem Sets

30%

25%

Homework

30%

30%

Final exam

 

10%

Language family report

Class participation. The mark for class participation depends first of all on regular attendance. More importantly it depends on being prepared and actively contributing to class discussion. Students will be regularly asked to contribute in class, and are encouraged to ask questions.  Participation is based on the following:

·       Class attendance

·       Preparation of homework and readings

·       Active involvement

 

Problem Sets.  Problem Sets are the graded version of the homework.  Late Problem Sets will be reduced by 10% of the total grade, and they will not be accepted once the answers have been distributed/discussed.  Grad students are required to do all 5 Problem Sets, while undergrads are only required to do 4 (will take best 4 out of 5).   

 

Homework. Homework exercises will come from the book and other sources.  These exercises are turned in, discussed in class, but not graded for correctness.  You get credit for just doing them, but neglecting to turn them in will hurt your grade.  Each homework is worth 10 points.  Any homework turned in late will receive only 8 points.  There are 10 possible homeworks – only 9 are required for grads and 8 for undergrads.  Can do 1 extra for extra credit. 

 

Language Family report (graduate students only). Graduate students will pick a language family on which to report to the class, presenting oral reports periodically during the course.  These are designed to investigate the topics in class/text into other languages not discussed.  The topics will include at least the following:

  • classification of the group
  • historical changes (internal)
  • language contact phenomena

 

Final exam. The exam covers all of the course material and is fairly objective in its nature. 


TTh 4:00-5:50 – PCAT 138

Jeff Conn                      connjc@pdx.edu                 503-725-4099                    East Hall 241

Office Hours: Tues 12:30-2:30 & by appointment              webpage:  http://web.pdx.edu/~connjc/

 

Course calendar

 

Week

Tuesday

Thursday

1

1 (T 27 Sept) Introduction

Bureaucratic preliminaries

2 (Th 29 Sept) Read 1 - Introduction (1-10); 2 - Sound Change (16-49)

2

3 (T 4 Oct)  Ch 2 – Sound change

Ch 1 Ex 1.1 (Choose 3), 1.2, pp. 10-15

Ch 2 Ex 2.1 pp. 52-61 (to be assigned)

4 (Th 6 Oct)  Ch 3 - Borrowing

 

Ch 2 Ex 2.4, 2.6, 2.7 pp. 52-61

3

5 (T 11 Oct) Ch 3 - Borrowing

Problem Set 1 due

6 (Th 13 Oct) Ch 4 – Analogical Change

Ch 3 Ex Choose 2 from: 3.2, 3.3, 3.5

4

7 (T 18 Oct) Ch 4 – Analogical Change

Problem Set 2 due

Ch 4 Ex 4.2

8 (Th 20 Oct) NO CLASS

 

5

9 (T 25 Oct) Ch 9 – Semantic/Lexical Change

Problem Set 3 due

10 (Th 27 Oct) Ch 9 – Semantic/Lexical Change

Ch 9 Ex TBA

Ch 10 – Syntactic Change

Can turn in Problem Set 3 here too

6

11 (T 1 Nov) Ch 10 – Syntactic Change

Ch 10 Ex TBA

12 (Th 3 Nov) Ch 5 - Reconstruction

Problem Set 4 due

7

13 (T 8 Nov) Ch 5 - Reconstruction

Ch 5 Ex TBA

14 (Th 10 Nov) Ch 5 - Reconstruction

Ch 8 – Internal Reconstruction

Ch 5 Ex TBA

8

15 (T 15 Nov) Ch 8 – Internal Reconstruction

Ch 8 Ex TBA

16 (Th 17 Nov) Ch 7 – Models of Linguistic Change

Problem Set 5 due

9

17 (T 22 Nov) Ch 7 – Models of Ling Change

Ch 11 – Explaining Ling Change

(Th 24 Nov)

Thanksgiving

 

10

18 (T 29 Nov) Ch 11 – Explaining Ling Change

What’s next for Language Change?

19 (1 Dec) What’s next for Language Change?

REVIEW – Grad students report

 

Final Exam: T 6 Dec, 3:30-5:20 PM