Languages of Latin America and the Caribbean

Catalog description

This course, taught in English, provides a broad overview of languages in Meso-America, South America, and the circum-Caribbean, including pre-Colombian languages and societies, as well as zones of cultural and linguistic contacts that emerged in the colonial and post-colonial eras in zones of Spanish, French, Portuguese, British, and Dutch colonization and imperialism in the Americas. The course topics include the basic linguistic properties of the various language varieties or language groupings, the sociohistorical context in which those language(s) developed, and their modern-day social and cultural milieus. Special emphasis will be placed on processes of language and cultural birth, death, shift, and maintenance, as well as the role of multilingualism, and inter-linguistic and -cultural contact, hybridity, synchronicity, and creolization.