Linguistics 460/560:  Historical and Comparative Linguistics

Scott DeLancey                                         227 Straub
delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu                          346-3901  

Office hours   Monday 11-12
               Tuesday 2-3
               or (preferably) by appointment

Web page for this course: 

        http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/courses/460.html

Text:     Campbell, Lyle, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (required)

Topics                                            	   Read Ch.

Jan  3         Language change and historical linguistics    1,14

  5-10         Sound Change and the Comparative Method          2

 12-21         Comparative reconstruction                       5

 24-28         Morphology                                       4

 31-Feb 7      Internal reconstruction                          8

 9-11          Historical syntax                                9

 14-16         Grammaticalization

    18         Lexical change                                  10

 21-23         Establishing language relationship             6-7

 25-28         Nature and causes of linguistic change          11

Mar 2-4        Contact, borrowing, areal patterns            3,12

 10-14         Historical linguistics and prehistory        13,15

There will be weekly homework problems worth 25% of your final
grade, a take-home midterm worth 35%, and a final exam or
research paper worth 40%.  Problems will be distributed Monday or
Wednesday of each week, and due in class the following Monday. 
No, you can't turn your homework in late.
     The midterm will be given out in class on Friday, February
4, and due in class on Monday, Feb. 7.  The final will be given
out in class on Wednesday, March 9, and due in the Linguistics
office (233 Straub) or my office (227 Straub) ABSOLUTELY NO
LATER THAN 12:00 noon on Thursday, March 17.

Research Paper

The paper option is obligatory for graduate students, optional
for undergraduates.  All students planning to write a term paper
should see me to talk about a topic by Jan. 15.

The default topic for your research paper is a report on a
particular language family or branch.  The content of the report
will depend on the particular family.  If you are looking at a
family which has been well-studied from a comparative point of
view, your report should summarize what has been reconstructed:
phoneme inventory, accent system, syllable canon, basic
morphology, whatever has been done.  For a less well-studied
family, where less reconstruction has been done, your primary
task is to summarize the evidence which leads linguists to
believe that the languages of this group are genetically related. 
If there is any controversy about this (as there often is),
discuss the arguments for both sides.