The Unity and Diversity of Human Language
In this course we will introduce the main issues in the study of linguistic diversity: how languages differ and how they are the same (language families, language contact, and language universals), diversity in geographical and social dialects, "language emergence" of pidgins and creoles, "language death" and endangered languages, linguistic history and language change, as well as the major theoretical approaches to the study of linguistic diversity. Linguistic data will be drawn from a wide variety of languages, and linguistic phenomena will relate primarily to aspects of word formation (morphology) and sentence structure (syntax). 3 hrs. lect/disc.