24.914
Language Variation and Change
Explores how linguistic systems vary across time and space. Uses case studies in particular languages to examine how language transmission and social factors shape the grammatical systems of individual speakers, and how grammar constrains variation and change. Students work in groups to analyze corpus or survey data. Provides instruction and practice in written and oral communication.
Spring 2019
Topics
- Introduction
- Regional Accents - Transcription
- Overview of Accent Variation in the USA
- Speech Acoustics
- Acoustic Analysis of Speech
- What Are the Units of Sound Change?
- Regular Sound Change vs. Lexical Diffusion (I)
- Regular Sound Change vs. Lexical Diffusion (II)
- Age-Related Variation
- Social Variation
- Variation within the Individual
- The Role of the Listener in Sound Change
- Phonetic Conditioning of Sound Change
- An Exemplar-Based Model of Sound Change
- Phonetic Grammar and Gradual Change
- Stability and Change
- Sound Change and Fashion
- Morphological Conditioning
- Chain Shifts
- Chain Shifts (cont’d)
- The Comparative Method: Introduction
- The Comparative Method: Grouping Languages, Cladistics
- Presentations
- Word Order Change in Old English
- Syntactic Change II
Readings
- Guy, G. (1980). Variation in the group and the individual: the case of final stop deletion. In W. Labov (ed.), Locating Language in Time and Space . Academic Press. 1–36. ISBN: 9780124321014.
- Labov, W. (1994). Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal factors . Blackwell. ISBN: 9780631179146.
- Labov, W. (2010). Principles of Linguistic Change: Cognitive and Cultural Factors . Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 9781405112154.
- Ladefoged, P.N. (2001). A Course in Phonetics . Heinle & Heinle. ISBN: 9780155073197.
- SES #: 2 · Topics: Regional Accents - Transcription · Readings: Ladefoged (2001) ch. 4
- SES #: 4 · Topics: Speech Acoustics · Readings: Labov et al. (1997)
- SES #: 5 · Topics: Acoustic Analysis of Speech · Readings: Ladefoged (2001) ch. 8
- SES #: 7 · Topics: Regular Sound Change vs. Lexical Diffusion · Readings: Labov (1981), (2010) ch. 13
- SES #: 9 · Topics: Age-Related Variation · Readings: Harrington et al. (2000)
- SES #: 10 · Topics: Social Variation · Readings: Labov (1963)
- SES #: 12 · Topics: The Role of the Listener in Sound Change · Readings: Guy (1980)
- SES #: 14 · Topics: An Exemplar-Based Model of Sound Change · Readings: Ohala (1981)
- SES #: 16 · Topics: Stability and Change · Readings: Pierrehumbert (2001)
- SES #: 21 · Topics: The Comparative Method: Introduction · Readings: Campbell (2005) ch. 5
- SES #: 25 · Topics: Word Order Change in Old English · Readings: Pintzuk (1995)
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: 24.900 or 24.9000 U (Spring) 3-0-9 units. HASS-S
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2019
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.