Languages are always changing on every level, and the development from Old to Modern English provides many examples. In this course we will focus on the types of language change that most typically occur (e.g. sound change, lexical change, morphological change, syntactic change, semantic and pragmatic change), and the mechanisms behind them, mostly using Brinton and Arnovick (2017). We will also deal with attitudes to change, some of the methods employed in historical linguistics as well as the internal and external causes of language change.

Students are expected to work on their own projects.