Interested in exploring languages? A whole family of languages?
Looking for a CASE N&M?
Want to learn linguistic analysis skills in a fun, interactive
way?
Introduction to the Slavic Languages
SLAV-T252
Spring 2014
MW 1:00–2:15 pm, SY 103
carries CASE N&M
The Slavic languages form an important subgroup of
Indo-European and are spoken from East and Central Europe, through the Balkans,
and across northern Asia, and Russian serves as a lingua franca across Central
Asia. The three branches of Slavic
(East, West, and South) are composed of over a dozen living languages and boast
well over 400 million speakers.
The course is meant to be a fun and interactive approach
to exploring linguistic processes. No
previous experience with Slavic languages is required, but an active curiosity
about how people use and change language will be a plus.
Students acquire foundational concepts in linguistic
analysis which they will use to analyze a great array of language materials
from modern Slavic languages, inductively writing rules which they then test
with new data from other languages and drawing conclusions about the evolution
of languages and the forces which shape them.
Rather than learn about these "exotic" languages through
memorizing arbitrary rules and facts, students will learn a range of linguistic
approaches to understand how languages change over time and to compare aspects
of the Slavic languages, from alphabets to sound systems to vocabulary to verb
systems.
