80-385 Linguistics of Germanic Languages

9 units, Carnegie Mellon University

The Germanic languages include English, Dutch, Frisian, German, Pennsylvanisch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages, excluding Finnish. The course will serve as an extended casestudy for the application of concepts and analytical strategies taught in basic linguistics courses to some of these languages. Specifically, we take a bottomup approach to Dutch, Frisian, Icelandic, and Danish, starting with raw language material whenever possible, which we progressively analyze in terms of phonetics and phonology, morphology, and syntax. These case studies lead to comparisons between the languages and insight into their development and divergence over time. We follow this handson approach with historical and grammatical overviews, touching on some of the outstanding issues in Germanic linguistics. The approach should also help bring out the relevance of diachronic factors in the synchronic study of language, with historical forms of English being open to investigation, as these often reflect patterns found in contemporary Germanic languages.

Prerequisites: 80-180

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