Frank Carlson Library

Examine the system of regular and irregular verbs and how they move from one category to another - with a little help from the Old English system of weak and strong verbs. Then turn to the world of auxiliary verbs, where "shall" is in decline and "gonna" is on the rise.

Go behind the scenes of the world's dictionaries and see the very human decisions that go into creating them. Lexicographers tend to take a descriptive approach to language and study how we use words, including slang. But as readers, we turn to the dictionary for a prescriptive guide on how we should use words.

Conclude your course by considering the creativity of Shakespeare. The OED credits him with making up 1,700 new words, but how many of those did he actually create? And do any of us have the authority to make up new words? You'll also see how you can apply the linguistic tools from this course to investigate the living, changing language all around you.

Dive into the language of sports, which is so enmeshed in our everyday usage that we don't even pay attention to it. Go inside the world of baseball, boxing, football, basketball, tennis, and surfing and see what idioms we've borrowed into our nonathletic speech, from being "saved by the bell" to "throwing a curveball."

Humans love to play with words, whether it's to better express what we have to say or to show off a personal style. Study the ways in which new words are created, from combining, shortening, and functional shifts to blends, back formation, and reduplication. This rule-governed creativity gives us everything from slang to technology jargon.

Shift your attention to Greek, which also heavily influenced the English language of learning. Here you'll uncover a Greek treasury of language - including the word web around the root of "lexicon" ("lexicography," "lexus," "lexeme"). Then you'll turn to the influence of Greek mythology on English.

Did you know that "girl" used to mean "a child of either sex" or that "nice" used to mean "silly, foolish"? While some words are remarkably stable, many undergo semantic shifts. This lecture surveys the five major categories of semantic change: generalization, narrowing, amelioration, pejoration, and metaphorical extension.

Is it possible to consciously reform language? While most efforts fail, the use of non-sexist language in American English is an exception, thanks to recent sociopolitical movements. This lecture introduces the scope of sexist language, its system of empowerment and disempowerment, and successful interventions.

Linguists have borrowed the language of biology to trace the history of words - ancestors, family trees, variation, and selection. This lecture reflects on the blurry distinction between a dialect and a new language, then shows how systemic sound changes explain the etymological relationship between seemingly different - but related - words such as "hearty" and "cordial."

Where do words come from? How do they change over time? What counts as a word, anyway? Language is one of the things that reveal how our minds work, and by exploring the "secret life of words," you'll see the power of words - and what words can tell us about human history, technology, and culture.