| 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: | TTh 14:40-15:55 | |
| Physical classroom: | Pearson 005 | |
| Course website: | http://jnw.domains.swarthmore.edu/ling042 | |
| Course Moodle site: | LING042-01-S25 | |
| week | date | topic | to read (by class) / due (on Friday) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 21 Jan | Introduction to course, region | |
| 23 Jan | What is the Silk Road? Setting the stage: the Indo-European expansion Language change, sound changes | ||
| 2 | 28 Jan | Linguistic reconstruction, the comparative method | |
| 30 Jan | The Scythians Ancient Indo-European/Chinese interaction | ||
| 3 | 4 Feb | Aramaic as a Language of Wider Communication Autosegmental models of templatic morphology | |
| 6 Feb | |||
| 4 | 11 Feb | ||
| 13 Feb | Chang'an and the Tang dynasty 'frontier' | ||
| 5 | 18 Feb | Eastern Middle Iranian Languages Language decipherment | |
| 20 Feb | The Ancient Sogdian Letters The Merchant's Tale | ||
| 6 | 25 Feb | Khotanese Saka | |
| 27 Feb | |||
| 7 | 4 Mar | Turkic languages | |
| 6 Mar | Isogloss mapping Convergence and divergence | ||
| 11 Mar | Spring break! | ||
| 13 Mar | Spring break! | ||
| 8 | 18 Mar | The Princess's Tale Indigenous historical accounts | |
| 20 Mar | Grammaticalisation and paradigm levelling | ||
| 9 | 25 Mar | The Tokharians | |
| 27 Mar | |||
| 10 | 1 Apr | The Pilgrim's Tale | |
| 3 Apr | |||
| 11 | 8 Apr | The Tibetans Tonogenesis | |
| 10 Apr | The Nun's Tale | ||
| 12 | 15 Apr | The Mongols Linguistic convergence | |
| 17 Apr | More on writing systems | ||
| 13 | 22 Apr | Language relatedness | |
| 24 Apr | A new route through the grasslands | ||
| 14 | 29 Apr | Legacies of the Silk Road Today | |
| 1 May | TBD | ||
| 15 | TBA |