Linguistics: Languages of Asia

With the largest landmass of any continent and a majority of the world’s population, Asia is deeply diverse linguistic terrain, where even the major national languages may come from very different families and employ varied writing systems. Though many are endangered and little documented, Asia’s 2,000-plus languages are a crucial lens for looking in specific detail at the long-run history of places, peoples, and cultures, telling us “What’s where why?”, as language typologists sometimes put it. This course surveys four of Asia’s major language groups (Indo-Iranian, Turkic, Tibeto-Burman, and Sinitic) and four of its proposed linguistic areas (the Caucasus, India, mainland Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia), where a constellation of languages from a variety of families, as well as isolates, have long been in close contact. Lesser-studied languages large and small will be examined in close-up for both their linguistic features and the natural, social, and historical forces that shape them.