36
Lectures
30
minutes/lecture
1.
What Is Language?
Professor John McWhorter introduces the course by exploring two questions: What distinguishes the language ability of humans from the signaling system of animals, and when did humans first acquire language?
1.
What Is Language?
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19.
Dialects—The Fallacy of Blackboard Grammar
Understanding language change and how languages differ helps us see that what is often labeled "wrong" about people's speech is, in fact, a misanalysis.
19.
Dialects—The Fallacy of Blackboard Grammar
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2.
When Language Began
We look at evidence that language is an innate ability of the human brain, an idea linked to Noam Chomsky. But many linguists and psychologists see language as one facet of cognition rather than as a separate ability.
2.
When Language Began
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20.
Language Mixture—Words
The first language's 6,000 branches have not only diverged into dialects, but they have been constantly mixing with one another on all levels. The first of three lectures on language mixture looks at how this process applies to words.
20.
Language Mixture—Words
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3.
How Language Changes—Sound Change
The first of five lectures on language change examines how sounds evolve, exemplified by the Great Vowel Shift in English and the complex tone system in Chinese.
3.
How Language Changes—Sound Change
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21.
Language Mixture—Grammar
Languages also mix their grammars. For example, Yiddish is a dialect of German, but it has many grammatical features from Slavic languages like Polish. There are no languages without some signs of grammar mixture.
21.
Language Mixture—Grammar
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4.
How Language Changes—Building New Material
Language change is not just sound erosion and morphing, but the building of new words and constructions. This lecture shows how such developments lead to novel grammatical features.
4.
How Language Changes—Building New Material
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22.
Language Mixture—Language Areas
When unrelated or distantly related languages are spoken in the same area for long periods, they tend to become more grammatically similar because of widespread bilingualism.
22.
Language Mixture—Language Areas
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5.
How Language Changes—Meaning and Order
The meaning of a word changes over time. Silly first meant "blessed" and acquired its current sense through a series of gradual steps. Word order also changes: In Old English, the verb usually came at the end of a sentence.
5.
How Language Changes—Meaning and Order
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23.
Language Develops Beyond the Call of Duty
A great deal of a language's grammar is a kind of overgrowth, marking nuances that many or most languages do without. Even the gender marking of European languages is a frill, absent in thousands of other languages.
23.
Language Develops Beyond the Call of Duty
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6.
How Language Changes—Many Directions
The first language has evolved into 6,000 because language change takes place in many directions. Latin split in this way into the Romance languages as changes proceeded differently in each area where the Romans brought Latin.
6.
How Language Changes—Many Directions
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24.
Language Interrupted
Generally, a language spoken by a small, isolated group will be much more complicated than English. Languages are "streamlined" in this way when history leads them to be learned more as second languages than as first ones.
24.
Language Interrupted
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7.
How Language Changes—Modern English
As recently as Shakespeare, English words had meanings different enough to interfere with our understanding of his language today. Even by the 1800s, Jane Austen's work is full of sentences that would now be considered errors.
7.
How Language Changes—Modern English
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25.
A New Perspective on the Story of English
We trace English back to its earliest discernible roots in Proto-Indo-European and follow its fascinating development, including an ancient encounter with a language possibly related to Arabic and Hebrew.
25.
A New Perspective on the Story of English
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8.
Language Families—Indo-European
The first of four lectures on language families introduces Indo-European, which probably began in the southern steppes of Russia around 4000 B.C. and then spread westward to most of Europe and eastward to Iran and India.
8.
Language Families—Indo-European
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26.
Does Culture Drive Language Change?
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis proposes that features of our grammars channel how we think. Professor McWhorter discusses the evidence for and against this controversial but widely held view.
26.
Does Culture Drive Language Change?
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9.
Language Families—Tracing Indo-European
Linguists have reconstructed the proto-language of the Indo-Europeans by comparing the modern languages. Applying this process, we learn the Proto-Indo-European word for sister-in-law that was spoken 6,000 years ago.
9.
Language Families—Tracing Indo-European
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27.
Language Starts Over—Pidgins
This lecture is the first of five on how human ingenuity spins new languages out of old through the creation of pidgins and creoles. A pidgin is a stripped-down version of a language suitable for passing, utilitarian use.
27.
Language Starts Over—Pidgins
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10.
Language Families—Diversity of Structures
Semitic languages assign basic meanings to three-consonant sequences and create words by altering the vowels around them. In Sino-Tibetan languages, a sentence tends to leave more to context than we often imagine possible.
10.
Language Families—Diversity of Structures
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28.
Language Starts Over—Creoles I
Creoles emerge when pidgin speakers use the pidgin as an everyday language. Creoles are spoken throughout the world, wherever history has forced people to expand a pidgin into a full language.
28.
Language Starts Over—Creoles I
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11.
Language Families—Clues to the Past
The distribution of language families shows how humans have spread through migration. We trace the Austronesian language family to its origins on Formosa. Similar work sheds light on the history of Africa and North America.
11.
Language Families—Clues to the Past
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29.
Language Starts Over—Creoles II
As new languages, creoles don't have as many frills as older languages, but they do have complexities. Like real languages, creoles change over time, have dialects, and mix with other languages.
29.
Language Starts Over—Creoles II
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12.
The Case Against the World’s First Language
A few linguists have claimed to reconstruct words from the world's first language, but this work is extremely controversial. Professor McWhorter presents the case against this theory, called the "Proto-World" hypothesis.
12.
The Case Against the World’s First Language
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30.
Language Starts Over—Signs of the New
Creoles are the only languages that lack or have very little of the grammatical traits that emerge over time. In this, creole grammars are the closest to what the grammar of the first language was probably like.
30.
Language Starts Over—Signs of the New
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13.
The Case For the World’s First Language
Despite the hostility of most linguists to the Proto-World hypothesis, there is increasing evidence that many of the world's language families do trace to "mega-ancestors," even if evidence for a Proto-World remains lacking.
13.
The Case For the World’s First Language
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31.
Language Starts Over—The Creole Continuum
Just as one dialect shades into another, "creoleness" is a continuum concept. Once we know this, we are in a position to put the finishing touches on our conception of how speech varieties are distributed across the globe.
31.
Language Starts Over—The Creole Continuum
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14.
Dialects—Subspecies of Species
The first of five lectures on dialects probes the nature of these "languages within languages." Dialects are variations on a common theme, rather than bastardizations of a "legitimate" standard variety.
14.
Dialects—Subspecies of Species
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32.
What Is Black English?
Using insights developed in the course to this point, Professor McWhorter takes a fresh look at Black English, tracing its roots to regional English spoken in Britain and Ireland several centuries ago.
32.
What Is Black English?
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15.
Dialects—Where Do You Draw the Line?
Dialects of one language can be called languages simply because they are spoken in different countries, such as Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. The reverse is also true: The Chinese "dialects" are distinctly different languages.
15.
Dialects—Where Do You Draw the Line?
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33.
Language Death—The Problem
Just as there is an extinction crisis among many of the world's animals and plants, it is estimated that 5,500 of the world's languages will no longer be spoken in 2100.
33.
Language Death—The Problem
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16.
Dialects—Two Tongues in One Mouth
Diglossia is the sociological division of labor in many societies between two languages, with a "high" one used in formal contexts and a "low" one used in casual ones—as in High German and Swiss German in Switzerland.
16.
Dialects—Two Tongues in One Mouth
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34.
Language Death—Prognosis
There are many movements to revive dying languages. We explore the reasons that success is so elusive. For one, people often see their unwritten native language as less "legitimate" than written ones used in popular media.
34.
Language Death—Prognosis
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17.
Dialects—The Standard as Token of the Past
When a dialect of a language is used widely in writing and literacy is high, the normal pace of change is artificially slowed, as people come to see "the language" as on the page and inviolable. This helps create diglossia.
17.
Dialects—The Standard as Token of the Past
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35.
Artificial Languages
There have been many attempts to create languages for use by the whole world. The most successful is Esperanto. Sign languages for the deaf are also artificial languages, though ones fully equipped with grammar, nuance, and dialects.
35.
Artificial Languages
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18.
Dialects—Spoken Style, Written Style
We often see the written style of language as how it really "is" or "should be." But in fact, writing allows uses of language that are impossible when a language is only a spoken one.
18.
Dialects—Spoken Style, Written Style
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36.
Finale—Master Class
Professor McWhorter concludes with an etymological sampling of the English language, tracing the origin of every word in the sentence: While the snow fell, she arrived to ask about their fee.
36.
Finale—Master Class
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24
Lectures
30
minutes/lecture
1.
Alarm over the Decay of English
Is English going to the dogs? Embark on an exploration of myths and controversies about our native tongue—where it came from, where it’s going, and its unusual place among the world’s 6,000 languages. Begin your investigation by looking at the purported epidemic of English abuse.
1.
Alarm over the Decay of English
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13.
A Procession of Accidents and Fossils
Roll up your sleeves for some language archaeology, tracing the origin of seemingly nonsensical features in English that once had a function. An example: the initial N in the nicknames Ned and Nan is the fossil of mine, the archaic form of my, as in “mine Ed.”
13.
A Procession of Accidents and Fossils
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2.
Surprises in the Ancestry of Old English
Trace the evidence that English derives from a language that was incompletely learned by invaders of northern Europe more than 2,000 years ago. Where were these people from? An analysis of sound changes in their language, Proto-Germanic, leads to an intriguing hypothesis.
2.
Surprises in the Ancestry of Old English
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14.
The Pursuit of Logic in Language
Consider the role of logic in language and why double negatives are the default in French, Russian, and many other languages, including every dialect of English except the standard form. Dangling participles pose a similar problem of seeming illogical while being rarely misunderstood.
14.
The Pursuit of Logic in Language
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3.
Not Exactly Anglo-Saxon
How did Old English develop from Proto-Germanic? And why did people in Britain end up speaking the language of the Germanic invaders? Discover that the traditional explanation that English was brought to England by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the 5th century A.D. is vastly oversimplified.
3.
Not Exactly Anglo-Saxon
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15.
Clarity as the Logic of Language
Investigate the illogicality of English by looking at everything from the use of the definite article, the, which is difficult to teach to nonnative speakers, to the blatantly ungrammatical “aren’t I,” which is the contraction for “are not I” and is preferred over the more logical “ain’t I.”
15.
Clarity as the Logic of Language
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4.
Don’t Forget the Celtic Connection
English has a more interesting history after the Anglo-Saxon period than was previously thought. See how the evidence is in grammatical constructions you use every day. For example, the reason you say “I’m building a house” rather than “I build house” traces to Celtic influences.
4.
Don’t Forget the Celtic Connection
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16.
20th-Century Fashions from Strunk & White
Delve into two influential works that prescribe how English should be used: Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style and Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Both mix astute advice with overly fussy personal opinions. How do you decide which is which?
16.
20th-Century Fashions from Strunk & White
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5.
From Insider Language to Lingua Franca
Explore the general properties of human language to learn the place of English in the broad spectrum of different tongues. In the process, discover how to distinguish a language spoken by a limited number of people from one used by hundreds of millions around the globe.
5.
From Insider Language to Lingua Franca
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17.
The Kinds of Grammar You Don’t Hear About
Explore features of the language that are off the beaten track of conventional grammar. For example, handbooks often decry the use of the passive voice, but it can be a powerful tool—as in passive expressions using got, which acts as a marker of misfortune.
17.
The Kinds of Grammar You Don’t Hear About
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6.
English as Easy German
Starting with a simple sentence in German, peel away layers of complexity that don’t exist in English. Then uncover more evidence that English is unusual in the simplicity of many of its grammatical features, showing that something happened to pare it down.
6.
English as Easy German
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18.
Linguists Uncovering Grammar We All Use
Focus on fascinating discoveries about grammar in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, an authoritative guide to usage written by linguists. Learn that English doesn’t have a future tense, and analyze the peculiar function of up in such expressions as “clean up.”
18.
Linguists Uncovering Grammar We All Use
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7.
The Viking Conquest of English
Trace the events that explain why Old English lost much of its complexity in the transition to Middle English. The agents of change were not the Norman French, who arrived in 1066, but the already established Vikings, whose Old Norse fused with Old English to create an abbreviated new language.
7.
The Viking Conquest of English
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19.
Speech versus Writing—Different Languages
Many languages have a huge gap between the spoken, colloquial form and what’s considered appropriate for formal or written communication. Trace the evolution of that gap in English by comparing how people actually talked in the past with how they expressed themselves on the page.
19.
Speech versus Writing—Different Languages
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8.
How the Words of Modern English Emerged
Starting with Celtic contributions to English vocabulary, explore the borrowings from Old Norse, French, and Latin. These have enriched English with a wealth of synonyms, allowing speakers to choose between alternatives such as the Anglo-Saxon hide versus the Latinate conceal.
8.
How the Words of Modern English Emerged
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20.
Speechmaking—From Oratory to Plain Speaking
Public speaking in English is currently trending toward a more informal style. Contrast speeches given in the old oratorical style with the more colloquial approach that took hold in the 1960s. Paradoxically, this loss of rhetorical polish has not meant a loss of eloquence.
20.
Speechmaking—From Oratory to Plain Speaking
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9.
Black English—The Streamlining Continues
Having seen that Proto-Germanic was streamlined into Old English, which was streamlined into Modern English, discover that Black English takes this process a step further. What some regard as bad grammar is language evolution, analogous to the shift from biblical Hebrew to modern Hebrew.
9.
Black English—The Streamlining Continues
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21.
The Old and New Styles of Writing
See how writing styles have changed by comparing typical school reading assignments in the United States from the beginning and end of the 20th century. Then search out the reasons for this marked shift. One clue is that Americans in the past often spoke of a fine style as “good English.”
21.
The Old and New Styles of Writing
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10.
Honored Conceits of Blackboard Grammar
Begin a new section of the course that focuses on your own relationship with language. In this lecture, trace the origin of “correct” usage to Robert Lowth, an 18th-century bishop who wrote an influential textbook on grammar that is the leading source of prescriptivist rules still promoted today.
10.
Honored Conceits of Blackboard Grammar
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22.
Got Poetry? Language with Spice
Until recently, poetry had a central role in American culture. Why has this distinctive form of elevated language declined, and how has poetry itself changed? Chart this transformation in poets from Longfellow and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Billy Collins and Kurt Cobain.
22.
Got Poetry? Language with Spice
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11.
Pronoun Fashions Come and Go
In a sentence such as “Tell each student to hand in their paper,” no ambiguity arises, but prescriptivists insist that the singular form of the pronoun be used: his, her, or his or her. Ponder that pronouns’ behavior is unpredictable and ever-changing in all languages.
11.
Pronoun Fashions Come and Go
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23.
Why Texting Is Misunderstood
Do the shortcuts and informality of e-mail and text messages represent bad writing? Probe this controversy in light of the unique niche filled by these new forms of expression. Until the advent of e-mail and texting, there was no truly conversational form of writing analogous to conversational speech.
23.
Why Texting Is Misunderstood
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12.
Wrong Then, Proper Now—and Vice Versa
Turn back the clock to a time when proper forms of speech seem ungrammatical now, and what were considered blatant errors sound perfectly correct today. Among the authors you examine are the American colonial poet Anne Bradstreet and Charles Dickens.
12.
Wrong Then, Proper Now—and Vice Versa
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24.
The Living Past and Future of English
Drawing on what you have learned about the history of English, look ahead to its possible future course. Some things will stay the same; others will change radically. Close by analyzing a famous 20th-century sentence to chart the curious pathways to our modern tongue.
24.
The Living Past and Future of English
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