2023-24 Academic Catalog

Why does German sometimes put the verb second and sometimes at the end, and how did this strange arrangement emerge? What differentiates the Scandinavian languages from Germanic tongues from more central latitudes? How did Germans come to say Apfel, while English and Dutch speakers say apple/appel? This course will explore these and similar questions, providing a linguistic overview of the German language and investigating key historical developments in the Germanic language family. Key topics will include dialectal variation, historical sound change, and syntactic structure, with primary focus on German and some attention to the Germanic language family as a whole. Prerequisite: Either previous or concurrent enrollment in any Carleton Linguistics courses or knowledge of German or another Germanic language (not English). Concurrent enrollment in German 101 or higher satisfies the knowledge of German requirement