Courses
Ling 11 Writing Systems: Examines different writing systems in terms of their historical origin and their cognitive properties.
Ling 130 Comparative and Historical Linguistics: Methods of reconstruction. Types and explanations of language change. Dialectology. The establishment of language relationships and subgroupings.
Ling 131 Indo-European Comparative Linguistics: The affinities of the Indo-European languages and the reconstruction of their common ancestor.
Ling 139 Language Spread: Linguistic background and the general principles of language spread. Mechanism of language spread, including creolization-decreolization, language planning, and the role of bilingualism. Case studies in language spread, including Austronesian, Indo-European, Amerindian, Uralic, African, Sinitic, and Australian languages. Relationship of language spread to immigration and culture spreads.
Ling 230 Historical Linguistics: Graduate introduction to the field, surveying change in phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics as well as methods of reconstruction and principles of dialectology.
Ling 231 Historical Semantics: Synchronic variation and diachronic change in the realm of meaning.
Ling 234 Indo-European Linguistics: A survey of Indo-European (IE) linguistics, intended for general linguists interested in learning about the most fully developed sub-area of historical linguistics and for language-area specialists interested in how specific language areas relate to IE as a whole. All areas of the field will be surveyed (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexical semantics, cultural reconstruction, and subgrouping and diversification), with special emphasis on issues of broad current research interest.
Ling 250B Language Contact
Ling 275 Survey of American Indian Languages: Reading and discussion of classic works on American Indian languages, and detailed examination of one North American language family.
Ling 290F Diachronic Linguistics
Ling 290H Linguistic Reconstruction