Discover the fascinating history of human language-from its beginning as a single tongue spoken some 150,000 years ago to the estimated 6,000 languages spoken today.
Overview
Syllabus
- By This Professor
- 01: What Is Language?
- 02: When Language Began
- 03: How Language Changes-Sound Change
- 04: How Language Changes-Building New Material
- 05: How Language Changes-Meaning and Order
- 06: How Language Changes-Many Directions
- 07: How Language Changes-Modern English
- 08: Language Families-Indo-European
- 09: Language Families-Tracing Indo-European
- 10: Language Families-Diversity of Structures
- 11: Language Families-Clues to the Past
- 12: The Case Against the World's First Language
- 13: The Case For the World's First Language
- 14: Dialects-Subspecies of Species
- 15: Dialects-Where Do You Draw the Line?
- 16: Dialects-Two Tongues in One Mouth
- 17: Dialects-The Standard as Token of the Past
- 18: Dialects-Spoken Style, Written Style
- 19: Dialects-The Fallacy of Blackboard Grammar
- 20: Language Mixture-Words
- 21: Language Mixture-Grammar
- 22: Language Mixture-Language Areas
- 23: Language Develops Beyond the Call of Duty
- 24: Language Interrupted
- 25: A New Perspective on the Story of English
- 26: Does Culture Drive Language Change?
- 27: Language Starts Over-Pidgins
- 28: Language Starts Over-Creoles I
- 29: Language Starts Over-Creoles II
- 30: Language Starts Over-Signs of the New
- 31: Language Starts Over-The Creole Continuum
- 32: What Is Black English?
- 33: Language Death-The Problem
- 34: Language Death-Prognosis
- 35: Artificial Languages
- 36: Finale-Master Class
Taught by
John McWhorter
