Kommentar |
This course looks at how older Englishes changed into the English we speak today. We will focus on changes driven by multilingualism, that is, on changes driven by language contact in communities as well as changes driven by multilingual speakers. By the end of the course, students will be able to give examples of major changes between historical varieties of English, and assess the extent to which these changes were driven by multilingualism. Students will also gain a deeper understanding of some of the cognitive processes underlying bilingualism and second language learning. Students will also receive basic training in the comparative method in order to reconstruct older stages of English from modern-day varieties. The course will be given asynchronously and have a hands-on format: each week, we will solve a dataset that illustrates a different example of change in the history of English.
All the datasets, instructional videos and video lectures can be completed within two hours, there is no additional preparation needed for any of the lectures. There will occasionally be voluntary online-meetings for questions and discussion.
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