120060 PS Linguistics: Proseminar 2 = Introductory Seminar (2011S)

This course introduces students to core mechanisms of language change and observable patterns in linguistic variation (diachronic and synchronic). Among the mechanisms which will be discussed are, for example, analogy, borrowing, reanalysis, productivity, iconicity, grammaticalization, metaphor, semantic reduction and attrition. It is the aim of this course to investigate these general diachronic processes within the synchronic phenomenon of English as a lingua franca (ELF). 'Old' processes of linguistic change can thus be observed in the current international use of English, which shows how linguistic variation constitutes potential long-term change in the making. In their individual projects, students will identify and analyze one or more mechanisms in a corpus of spoken, present-day ELF, the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), and present their findings in oral presentations as well as in their written papers.