LING 365 - Language Contact and Change

Credits: (3)
Prerequisite(s): LING 220
Languages in the world are everywhere in contact and this impacts the form that they take. This course introduces students to the study of language contact and how social factors surrounding contact contribute to change in language systems. It provides the historical context in which the study of language contact developed and answers questions like “What (and where) exactly is language contact?” and “Can language change be predicted on the basis of the social configuration in which individuals find themselves?” As an inherently interdisciplinary field, language contact studies draw on psycholinguistic, social and linguistic perspectives to answer these questions. Core sociolinguistic phenomena examined include speech accommodation, linguistic areas, pidgins, creoles, mixed languages, code-switching and borrowing.