Gives an overview of six most influential languages of the world: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese. The course explores the main concepts of geographical linguistics, factors that make a language influential, globalization and language ideology, the language life cycle and the role of globalization in language obsolescence. The focus will be on the spread of each of these languages in two aspects: geographical-historical (the origins of the languages, their spread in space and time) and socio-cultural (linguistic variation, language as national identity marker). A considerable portion of time will be devoted to the linguistic portraying of these languages: characterization of their typological features on the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, as well as study of fragments constituting their different linguistics pictures of the world. Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hoursPrerequisite(s):LING 111.3 or LING 114.3; and LING 112.3 or 6 credit units ARBC, CHIN, CREE, FREN, GERM, GRK, HEB, HNDI, JPNS, LATN, RUSS, SNSK, SPAN or UKR courses.
Gives an overview of six most influential languages of the world: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese. The course explores the main concepts of geographical linguistics, factors that make a language influential, globalization and language ideology, the language life cycle and the role of globalization in language obsolescence. The focus will be on the spread of each of these languages in two aspects: geographical-historical (the origins of the languages, their spread in space and time) and socio-cultural (linguistic variation, language as national identity marker). A considerable portion of time will be devoted to the linguistic portraying of these languages: characterization of their typological features on the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, as well as study of fragments constituting their different linguistics pictures of the world. Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hoursPrerequisite(s):LING 111.3 or LING 114.3; and LING 112.3 or 6 credit units ARBC, CHIN, CREE, FREN, GERM, GRK, HEB, HNDI, JPNS, LATN, RUSS, SNSK, SPAN or UKR courses.
