Course: LING 427. Languages in Contact (3)
Preparatory: ANTH 310, COMS 420 or ENGL 301. This course examines various effects of language contact–the occurrence of lexical and grammatical borrowing, such as borrowings between English and Spanish; the emergence of pidgins, creoles and mixed languages; and the process of language attrition or death in the context of a dominant language. The course also addresses the ways in which speakers in multilingual speech communities navigate between the languages that they speak and the language-planning efforts of multilingual communities that are aimed at controlling which language (variety) is used/taught in which setting, such as the use of ASL versus signed English. Much of this course focuses on issues of special relevance to multilingual speech communities in the U.S. and on language contact effects between English and such languages as Armenian, Spanish, Russian and Korean. Available for graduate credit.