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The Story of Human Language

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Overview

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Discover the fascinating history of human language-from its beginning as a single tongue spoken some 150,000 years ago to the estimated 6,000 languages spoken today.

Syllabus

  • 01: What Is Language?
  • 02: When Language Began
  • 03: How Language Changes: Sound Change
  • 04: How Language Changes: Building New Material
  • 05: How Language Changes: Meaning and Order
  • 06: How Language Changes: Many Directions
  • 07: How Language Changes: Modern English
  • 08: Language Families: Indo-European
  • 09: Language Families: Tracing Indo-European
  • 10: Language Families: Diversity of Structures
  • 11: Language Families: Clues to the Past
  • 12: The Case against the World’s First Language
  • 13: The Case for the World’s First Language
  • 14: Dialects: Subspecies of Species
  • 15: Dialects: Where Do You Draw the Line?
  • 16: Dialects: Two Tongues in One Mouth
  • 17: Dialects: The Standard as Token of the Past
  • 18: Dialects: Spoken Style, Written Style
  • 19: Dialects: The Fallacy of Blackboard Grammar
  • 20: Language Mixture: Words
  • 21: Language Mixture: Grammar
  • 22: Language Mixture: Language Areas
  • 23: Language Develops beyond the Call of Duty
  • 24: Language Interrupted
  • 25: A New Perspective on the Story of English
  • 26: Does Culture Drive Language Change?
  • 27: Language Starts Over: Pidgins
  • 28: Language Starts Over: Creoles I
  • 29: Language Starts Over: Creoles II
  • 30: Language Starts Over: Signs of the New
  • 31: Language Starts Over: The Creole Continuum
  • 32: What Is Black English?
  • 33: Language Death: The Problem
  • 34: Language Death: Prognosis
  • 35: Artificial Languages
  • 36: Finale: Master Class
  • By This Professor

Taught by

John McWhorter

Reviews

4.7 rating at The Great Courses Plus based on 272 ratings

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