LING 211. Introduction to Indigenous Languages.

Explores the Indigenous languages of North America, including their histories, linguistic properties, cultural settings, and key social issues facing them in the 21st century. Many different aspects of North American languages will be discussed including sound systems, grammatical classification, expression of time and space, and specialized linguistic phenomena like polysynthesis and reduplication. Social contexts of language will include performance, speech games, language change, language endangerment, and government policies.