Language Change

Five millennia ago, one single language spoken in the Pontic steppe started to be carried all across Europe and Western Asia. Today, this ancestral language – Proto-Indo-European (PIE) – no longer exists in its original form but lives on in about 450 daughter languages, such as English, Italian, Gaelic, Hindi, Farsi, or Russian. Languages are changing – everywhere, and all the time; the more time elapses, the more drastic are their changes. What is interesting, though, is that such changes do not occur entirely randomly, but follow certain general patterns which can be observed in language histories all over the globe. In this course, we are going to examine those processes and directions that are responsible for change on all levels of language: sound, morphology, syntax, lexis, semantics, and pragmatics. While our main focus will be English, examples from other languages will need to be included as well to illustrate patterns that cannot be observed in the Germanic languages. This seminar is designed for everyone willing to go on an excursion across centuries of language development. Prior knowledge of earlier stages of English is not required.

Bybee, Joan. 2015. Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.