Language Contact: Greek and the World's Languages

Undergraduate / Graduate

How do languages get into contact? How long do they stay in contact? What is contact-induced language change, and which are the mechanisms that govern it? What do arachnophobia, myalgia, geology, heterophagy mean? In this course we will study language contact and its outcomes, as well as the social and linguistic factors that regulate contact-induced changes. We will examine a wide range of language contact phenomena from both general linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives, and survey current approaches to all of the major types of contact-induced change (e.g. borrowing). Having Greek (but also other languages) as an example, we will consider linguistic and social aspects of the contact context as well as look into how the particular language has shaped the savant vocabulary of science, philosophy, arts, etc. More precisely, we will offer a brief overview of the history of the Greek language with special emphasis on the Greek vocabulary that Greek language landed or borrowed at different stages of its history as a result of its linguistic contact with other nations and languages. We will start with the Pre-Hellenic phase of Greek and then we focus in Proto-Hellenic, Ancient Greek, Koine, Medieval Greek and finally Modern Greek.