HS FR 14-16 „Language Change“
DATE
TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED
PREPARATION
15.10.
General Introduction - Language change: What? How? Why? Where?
Hickey 1-4, Croft 1-8, Crystal 1997 [18 pp]
22.10.
On the use of theories: General or specific?
Croft 1-8, any work of reference s.v. theory
05.11.
Change in the system or change in use? Some examples of analogy, redundancy and their likes
reference s.v.; Aitchison 9, Bryson 5, Newmeyer [50 pp]
12.11.
Shaping the scope of discussions: What has to be described and explained?
Croft 4-6, reference [3 pp]
19.11.
Grammaticalization: Patterns of grammaticalization
Croft 6. 3, McMahon 6. 3 [24 pp]
26.11.
Grammaticalization: Examples
Wischer [14 pp]
03.12.
Variation: Types of variation
McMahon 9 [28 pp]
10.12.
Variation: Examples
data will be supplied
17.12.
Language contact: General aspects and change
McMahon 8 [25 pp]
07.01.
Language contact: Examples
data will be supplied
14.01.
The role of the speakers
Scott/Machan 10-26, Milroy [32 pp]
21.01.
The role of the speakers: age, gender, class, and attitudes
reference, Crystal 1984 [14 pp]
28.01.
The role of the speakers: Attitudes
data will be supplied
04.02.
General discussion
Use your notes and brains
29.10.
Reading list:
Aitchison
Jean Aitchison. Language change : progress or decay ? 2nd ed. Cambridge 1991 [chapter
9 “Doing what comes naturally: inherent causes of language change” pp. 124-137].
Bryson
Bill Bryson. the mother tongue: english and how it got that way. New York 1990 [chapter
5 “Where words come from” pp. 67-83].
Croft
William Croft. Explaining language change. Longman Linguistic Library. Harlow 2000
[chapters 1 “Introduction” pp. 1-8, 6.3 “Grammaticalization” pp. 156-165].
Crystal 1984
David Crystal. Who cares about English usage? Harmondsworth 1984 [chapter “What
has sex got to do with it?” pp. 99-112].
Crystal 1997
-----. The Cambridge encyclopedia of language. 2nd ed. Cambridge 1997 [chapter 54
“Language change” pp. 330-335].
Hickey
Raymon Hickey (ed.). Motives for language change. Cambridge 2003 [“Introduction” pp.
1-4, Milroy pp. 143-157, Newmeyer pp. 18-36].
Machan/Scott
Tim William Machan and Charles T. Scott (eds.). English in its social contexts: essays in
historical sociolinguistics. Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. Oxford 1992 [“Introduction: Sociolinguistics, language change, and the history of English” pp. 3-27].
McMahon
April M.S. Mc;ahon. Understanding language change. Cambridge 1994 [chapters 6.3
“”Grammaticalisation” pp. 160-173, 8 “Language contact” pp. 200-224, 9 “Linguistic
variation” pp. 225-252].
Milroy
James Milroy. “On the role of the speaker in language change”, in Hickey 2003:143-157.
Newmeyer
Frederick J. Newmeyer. “Formal and functional motivation for language change”, in
Hickey 2003:18-36.
Wischer
Ilse Wischer. "Sprachkontakt und Grammatikalisierung - Zum Einfluß des Altnordischen
auf die Entwicklung der englischen Sprache", in Gerda Haßler (ed.), Sprachkontakt und
Sprachvergleich, Münster 2001, pp. 75-88. (UB: spr u 300.h 355; vormerken lassen!)
Attention
Though the reading amount is some 210 pages of differing size and difficulty, each participant
must make a serious effort to come to grips with the secondary literature. I therefore expect
ALL of you to be able to explain the theses proposed in them, and to justify or criticize these
theses by referring them to the basic arguments used in the respective articles. The ability to
do so will be checked in seminar, by the RANDOM choice of participants who will be asked to
introduce the seminar to the contributions to be discussed, AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MEETING; this will be part of your Leistungsnachweis.