The Story of Human Language

Locations
Call Number: DVD 417.7 McW Oversize
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 1st Floor 4-week checkout	DVD 417.7 McW Oversize	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"Course no. 1600."
36 lectures, 30 minutes each.
Course guidebook includes lecture outlines and notes, a time line, glossary, biographical notes, and bibliography.
Lecture 1. What is language? -- Lecture 2. When language began -- Lecture 3. How language changes: sound change -- Lecture 4. How language changes: building new material -- Lecture 5. How language changes: meaning and order -- Lecture 6. How language changes: many directions -- Lecture 7. How language changes: modern English -- Lecture 8. Language families: Indo-European -- Lecture 9. Language families: tracing Indo-European -- Lecture 10. Language families: diversity of structures -- Lecture 11. Language families: clues to the past -- Lecture 12. The case against the world's first language.
Lecture 13. The case for the world's first language -- Lecture 14. Dialects: subspecies of species -- Lecture 15. Dialects: where do you draw the line? -- Lecture 16. Dialects: two tongues in one mouth -- Lecture 17. Dialects: the standard as token of the past -- Lecture 18. Dialects: spoken style, written style -- Lecture 19. Dialects: the fallacy of blackboard grammar -- Lecture 20. Language mixture: words -- Lecture 21. Language mixture: grammar -- Lecture 22. Language mixture: language areas -- Lecture 23. Language develops beyond the call of duty -- Lecture 24. Language interrupted.
Lecture 25. A new perspective on the story of English -- Lecture 26. Does culture drive language change? -- Lecture 27. Language starts over: Pidgins -- Lecture 28. Language starts over: Creoles I -- Lecture 29. Language starts over: Creoles II -- Lecture 30. Language starts over: signs of the new -- Lecture 31. Language starts over: the Creole continuum -- Lecture 32. What is Black English? -- Lecture 33. Language death: the problem -- Lecture 34. Language death: prognosis -- Lecture 35. Artificial languages -- Lecture 36. Finale: master class.
Taught by: Professor John McWhorter, Manhattan Institute.
Course explores many of the common questions about language, such as: Why isn't there just a single language? Or, How does a language change, and when it does, is that change indicative of decay or growth?
DVD format.

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