General Linguistics (Ordinario)

Since its establishment as a modern scientific discipline, linguistics has considered language change as an object of study: originally, indeed, in its nineteenth-century stage, as a privileged focus since the first fully modern method to come to the fore in the history of the discipline can be said to be the comparative-historical method. Beginning with the canonisation, with the 20th century, of the distinction between a synchronic and diachronic perspective (Saussure, in particular), the pendulum has swung back and forth several times with the import in one or the other direction of concepts and tools of method first developed on one of the two fronts.

To cite just two examples: Hoenigswald (1950) introduced into diachronic linguistics, for the reconstruction of proto-languages, the discovery procedure employed by American structuralism to establish the phonematic inventory of a language in synchronicity, while Kiparsky (1965), “by distinguishing innovation from restructuring [...], introduced the synchronic distinction of competence and performance into the realm of sound change” (so Blevins 2004: 66) where in turn, with the synchronic ordering of phonological rules, relative chronology, a tool of diachronic/historical linguistics, had been imported. The latter, it should be added, are not synonymous expressions for many.

In this course, after a general overview of the topic, the results of current or recently completed research will be presented and discussed, all of which have the analysis of change as their leitmotif, with different methods and tools. One of the topics on the agenda will be the diachronic emergence of typological rarities, for which an attempt will be made to find a common thread that helps to explain them based on preconditions determined by change. On the front of methods, there will be a presentation of the use of psycho- and neuro-linguistic methodology (event-related potentials and eye-tracking) – usually employed for the synchronic study of language processing – for the investigation of ongoing change.

For those who approach the course with no previous knowledge of linguistics, a 20-hour supplementary teaching programme is provided as an aid.