History of the Russian Language

In this course we will focus on the language situation in Russia from the 11th to the 21st centuries. We will address the historical and socio-cultural factors that have played a role in the development of the Russian language. We will trace the development of the sound and grammatical structures of Russian over the past thousand years and find relics of old forms in modern Russian. Over the course of many centuries, both Church Slavonic and native East Slavonic varieties appear to have been in use, sometimes coexisting and sometimes mixing with each other. Though the breakthrough of a unified standard based on the East Slavonic variety took place in the 18th to 19th centuries, we can see the interaction of Church Slavonic and East Slavonic in modern Russian texts.

By the end of this course students should be able to:
1. discuss the most important historical and socio-cultural events in Russian history;
2. discuss phonetic and morphological developments in the history of Russian;
3. identify old grammar forms in modern Russian;
4. identify Church Slavonic versus East Slavonic forms in Russian; and
5. analyze Russian language of the 21st century from a historical perspective.