| Professor: | Jonathan North Washington | |
| Office: | Pearson 105 | |
| Office phone: | x6134 | |
| Office hours: | W 13:30-15:00 & by appointment | |
| Email/messaging: | jwashin1@swarthno scrapers please...more.edu | |
| Meeting time: | MW 10:30-11:45 | |
| Physical classroom: | Science Center 246 | |
| Course website: | http://jnw.domains.swarthmore.edu/ling009 | |
| Course Moodle site: | F26 - LING009.01 | |
| week | date | language | linguistic topic | society/culture topic | assignment (due by class) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 31 Aug | Introduction to course and region | |||
| 2 Sep | Proto Indo-European | Morphological change | What is the Silk Road? Indo-European expansion | ||
| 2 | 7 Sep | No class — Labour Day! | |||
| 9 Sep | Indo-European languages | Phonological change | Elements of Indo-European culture | ||
| 3 | 14 Sep | Ancient Indic & Iranian languages: Sanskrit, Avestan, Median, Old Persian | Models of language relatedness Linguistic reconstruction | The Scythians Ancient Indo-European/Chinese interaction | |
| 16 Sep | Imperial Aramaic | Lingua Francas | Aramaic as a lingua franca | ||
| 4 | 21 Sep | Imperial Aramaic | Autosegmental models of templatic morphology | ||
| 23 Sep | Chang'an and the Tang dynasty 'frontier' | ||||
| 5 | 28 Sep | Eastern Middle Iranian Languages Sogdian | The Sogdian Letters "The Merchant's Tale" | HW5: Reading Sogdian |
|
| 30 Sep | The language behind the "unknown Kushan script" | Language decipherment | |||
| 6 | 5 Oct | Khotanese Saka | Writing system transmission | HW6: Reading Khotanese Saka |
|
| 7 Oct | Turkic languages | Isoglosses & isogloss maps/mapping | |||
| 12 Oct | No class — Fall break! | ||||
| 14 Oct | No class — Fall break! | ||||
| 7 | 19 Oct | Turkic languages | Vowel harmony | HW7: Turkic language relatedness |
|
| 21 Oct | Old Turkic | Writing system creation | Indigenous historical accounts | HW8: Reading Old Turkic | |
| 8 | 26 Oct | Old Turkic | Interlinear glossing | "The Princess's Tale" | HW9: Interlinear glossing of Old Turkic |
| 28 Oct | Old Uyghur | HW10: Irq Bitig reading | |||
| 9 | 2 Nov | Tokharian languges | Music and other cultural exchange | ||
| 4 Nov | Tokharian B | HW11: Reading Tokharian B | |||
| 10 | 9 Nov | Loanwords, wanderwords | "The Pilgrim's Tale" | ||
| 11 Nov | Tibetan | Tonogenesis | HW12: Reading Tibetan | ||
| 11 | 16 Nov | Syntactic change | "The Nun's Tale" Dunhuang caves | HW13: Syntactic change |
|
| 18 Nov | Middle Mongol | HW14: Reading Middle Mongol | |||
| 12 | 23 Nov | Middle Mongol | HW15: More Middle Mongol reading |
||
| 25 Nov | A new route through the grasslands | ||||
| 13 | 30 Nov | "Altaic" languages | Language contact & linguistic convergence | ||
| 2 Dec | Parts East: Nusantra to New Guinea | ||||
| 14 | 7 Dec | Legacies of the Silk Road Today | HW16: Response to Hansen's conclusion | ||
| TBA | final presentations! | ||||