Course Description
Summary
Languages shift and change over time, and while much of this is due to new innovations by speakers, languages can also change due to contact with other languages. Throughout the course, we will examine various situations of contact and how the sociocultural factors shape the languages. We will examine English鈥檚 own history of contact, particularly with the French language, and we will study how new languages, called creoles, arise as a result of contact between many different peoples. We will close the course with a broader discussion of what contact in a globalized world means for the future of the world鈥檚 languages.
