Text, Context, and Meaning. An introductory course in linguistics. This course is an introduction to aspects of semantic and pragmatic systems in natural language. Emphasis in the course will be on data analysis. Language and History.
All languages evolve in the context of a society.
This course will focus on the ways in which the study of language history and social history can complement each other. The first part of the course will examine how the findings of linguistic reconstruction can aid the historian in describing the features and developments of earlier societies. The specific examples to be used are proto-Indoeuropean and early Roman culture and society. The second half of the course will examine how major events in social and political history affected the development of the languages which were the affected culture's vehicles of expression. Illustrations to be used include the spread of Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the Norman conquest of England, the cultural impact of the Renaissance, the invention of printing, the Protestant Reformation, and the French Revolution.