230343 The World of Invented Languages (S) (SoSe 2017)

With over 7,000 natural languages in the world, people still devote a substantial amount of their time to either develop or learn an artificial language such as Esperanto, Klingon, or Dothraki. But what makes these (at times brilliant and ambitious) constructed languages different from natural languages? Can they even be considered proper languages or are they rather elaborate language plays? What does it take to create a language and why do people deem it necessary to develop something as complex as a whole language from scratch?

In this class, we will delve into the highly fascinating world of invented languages to shed light on serious linguistic questions regarding, for example, language universals and typology, historical and sociolinguistics, philosophy of language, etc. by looking closer at both failed and successful constructed languages from the past and present.

“The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave, or what its creations should look like, but to describe those creations in all their messy glory and try to figure out what they can teach us about life, the world, and, especially in the case of linguistics, the workings of the human mind.” - Arika Okrent

Teilnahmevoraussetzungen, notwendige Vorkenntnisse

BM3 completed