This course provides an introduction to the study of language change and language families. We will examine different types of language change (sound change, syntactic change, meaning change), and look at the explanations of such change. We will learn the core methodologies of Historical Linguistics, especially the Comparative Method, and apply it to a wide variety of languages. We will also examine a number of case studies of language change due to the contact with other languages, and the many different results which take place (language shift, linguistic convergence, pidginization/creolization, etc.).
