LING 115. Linguistic Typology and Constructed Languages

Humans have long been driven to duplicate and manipulate the properties of natural language to create new languages for the purposes of enhancing works of fiction, for aiding human communication, or even for pure intellectual curiosity. In this course, students will explore this drive through development of their own constructed languages, guided by rigorous study of the typology of patterns observed in real human languages. Topics to be covered include phoneme inventories, phonological rules, morphological classification, syntactic structure, language change over time, dialectal variation, and writing systems. Students will also apply their knowledge of linguistic typology to critically assess the design of existing constructed languages such as Esperanto and Klingon.
Prerequisite: LING 001  or LING 045  or permission of instructor.
Social sciences.
1 credit.
Catalog chapter: Linguistics  
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/linguistics


Access the class schedule to search for sections.



Print-Friendly Page (opens a new window)
Close Window