LING 407/507: Language Contact

Instructor: G. Tucker Childs

Credits: Four

The aim of the course is to give an overview of the most important linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of language contact, i.e. linguistic situations where two (or more) languages affect each other in bilingual (or multilingual) individuals and/or speech communities. The main topics of the course will include mechanisms of contact-induced change (such as interference, borrowing, and interference through shift) as well as outcomes of language contact of various intensity (such as dialect accommodation, convergence, mixed languages, pidgins, creoles, and language death). In addition to familiarizing students with the historical and sociolinguistic contexts in which language contact can be studied, it will also introduce some analytical methods of comparing linguistic structures in order to provide a tool for linguistic analysis in language contact.

Prerequisites:

Major Assignments:

Textbooks: Hickey, Raymond ed. 2010. Handbook of Language Contact. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers.

Winford, Donald. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Oxford and New York: Blackwell.

Other Relevant Information: