The Uniformitarian Hypothesis and prehistoric sociolinguistics: what were stone-age languages like?

Please join us for The Uniformitarian Hypothesis and prehistoric sociolinguistics: what were stone-age languages like?, a talk by Dr. Peter Trudgill, Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics at Fribourg University and Honorary Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of East Anglia.

This talk will mark the conferral of Dr. Trudgill's UBC Doctor honoraris causa in the Department of English Language & Literatures and will be held at UBC in Buchanan Tower 323 on Thursday, November 29th from 4:30 – 6:00pm.

Abstract:

The uniformitarian principle that knowledge of processes that operated in the past can be inferred by observing ongoing processes in the present is fundamental to historical linguistics. But there is an important respect in which the present is not like the past. Increasing population and mobility have led to increasing language contact and larger language communities. For 97% of their history, human languages were spoken in neolithic and pre-neolithic societies which were societies of intimates, characterised by small size and dense social networks. A sociolinguistic-typological perspective suggests that the languages spoken in these communities may therefore have been typologically rather different from most modern languages, and that the methodology of ‘using the present to explain the past’ might therefore be less useful the further back in time we go.

Everyone is welcome to attend!  Light refreshments will be served.