Classics

The course aims to illustrate the relationship between language and writing; after a brief overview of the fundamental concepts of phonology and phonetics, and after having illustrated the main types of logographic and phonographic writing systems, we will try to expose the methodological and practical principles used by historical linguists to deduce linguistic realities from scripts used to represent ancient languages, especially Latin and Greek.

It is the only linguistics exam of this degree course, therefore no prerequisites

W. O’Grady - M. Dobrowolsky - F. Katamba (eds.), Contemporary Linguistics, Edinburgh 1987, chapters 2 and 15, pp. 18-64 (on phonetics), 591–624 (on writing systems) L. Trask, Historical Linguistics, Oxford - New York 1997 J. Clackson (ed.), A Companion to the Latin Language, Chichester/Malden (MA), 2011, chapters 3 (pp. 29–39), 6 (83-91), 7 (pp. 92-104), 8 (pp. 105-117), 13 (pp. 199-219), 14 (pp. 220-234), and 15 (pp. 236-255) teaching materials and handouts provided by the teacher

Attendance is not mandatory, but recommended.

The exam is oral. It consists in answering questions that deal with all the main topics covered during the course

The course will take place in the traditional way, with lessons in the classroom