LING 253

This course provides an overview of the linguistic landscape of the Indigenous languages of Canada and North America. We begin with the Indigenous perspectives of the origin, properties, and relations between languages and cultures and the properties of languages growing from the places of where they are spoken. We then correspond this view with the Western linguistic perspective of language family trees and linguistic features commonly found in Indigenous languages of North America. We address the process of child language acquisition, in particular the effects of interruptions through residential schools, forced assimilation, and foster care. A second major topic in this course is the linguistic and cultural impact of education delivered through the lens of official bilingualism. The last major topic is the revitalization of Indigenous languages in Canada and worldwide. The methods, the approaches, and the success stories provide a varied picture of the efforts by speakers, educators, and linguists to relieve and reverse the loss of languages and cultures.