Linguistic prehistory

• Indo-European linguistic prehistory
• Methods of linguistic prehistory
• Linguistic prehistory limitations

Linguistic change

• Early theories
• Internal and external causes
• Interaction of causal factors

Sound change

• Non-phonemic (Allophonemic) changes
• Phonemic changes
• General sound changes
• Common sound changes
• Relative chronology
• Chain shifts

Borrowing

• Cultural inferences

Analogical changes

• Proportional Analogy
• Analogical levelling
• Analogical extension
• Analogy and sound change
• Analogical models
• Other analogies

Comparative method

• Regularity of sound change
• Basic assumptions

Linguistic reconstruction

• Proto-languages

Linguistic classification

• Language families
  • Sub-grouping
• Terminology
• Glottochronology (Lexicostatistics)

Models of linguistic change

• Family-tree model
• Dialectology (Linguistic geography)
• Wave theory
• Sociolinguistics
• Lexical diffusion

Internal reconstruction

• Relative chronology

Syntactic change

• Mechanisms of syntactic change
• Reanalysis and extension
• Generative approaches
• Grammaticalisation
• Syntactic reconstruction

Semantic change

Lexical change

Areal linguistics

• Linguistic areas

Distant genetic relationships

• Lexical comparison
• Sound correspondences
• Grammatical evidence
• Borrowing
• Semantic constraints
• Onomatopoeia
• Nursery forms
• Short forms and unmatched segments
• Chance similarities
• Sound-meaning isomorphism
• Only linguistic evidence
• Erroneous morphological analysis
• Non-cognates
• Spurious forms

Philology

• Role of writing