Linguistics

What does it mean to say that two languages are related, and how do linguists trace those relationships? How do sound shifts and vocabulary changes accumulate to turn one historical language into several modern ones? What social or political forces can speed up or slow down language change in a community? How can studying older stages of a language deepen our understanding of modern grammar and meaning? Are there words in your language whose origins or history you find especially surprising or revealing?

How do linguists break down the continuous stream of speech into individual sounds they can describe and compare? What is the difference between the sounds a language allows (its phonology) and the way individuals physically produce them (phonetics)? Why do some sound contrasts matter in one language but not in another—for example, aspirated versus unaspirated consonants? How do accents and pronunciation differences influence people’s judgments about speakers, fairly or unfairly? Can you think of a sound in another language that is hard for you to produce or hear distinctly, and why?

What kinds of patterns do linguists look for when they analyze how words combine into phrases and sentences? How can two sentences with similar words in different orders end up meaning very different things? Why is it useful to distinguish between ‘prescriptive’ rules of grammar and how people actually speak in everyday life? How can studying sentence structure reveal hidden assumptions or biases in the way information is presented? Have you noticed any sentence patterns in another language that have no easy equivalent in your own?

How do factors like region, class, gender, and age shape the way people speak within the same language community? Why are some dialects considered ‘standard’ or prestigious while others are stigmatized, even if all are equally systematic? What happens to a language when its speakers migrate, mix with other groups, or face pressure to assimilate? How do code-switching and mixing languages function as tools of identity, solidarity, or resistance? Is there a way of speaking you use in some settings but not others, and what does that shift accomplish for you?