Historical Linguistics

(Cross-listed as LING 71). Languages change. Sometimes they die out, sometimes new ones are created. Principle topics are: how languages change, how new languages emerge, how they influence each other, and how we can find out about languages of the past, even those that were never written down. Covers the basic ideas of historical linguistics, the branch of linguistics that is concerned with reconstruction of the history of a language, including the Comparative Method, internal reconstruction, sound shifts, morphological change, syntactic change, and contact languages. Examples will come from Indo-European (the large language family that includes English) and from other language families. No pre-requisites.