The course aims to provide students with an introduction to historical sociolinguistics. The language studied will be the Tamil language, typologically distant from the European languages and spoken in the Southern area of ​​the Indian subcontinent.

Different typology of texts written in Tamil will be analysed and discussed taking into account their genre, function, writing support, and recipients of the text. The aim is to observe the linguistic variation and the linguistic change correlating it to extra-linguistic factors. The lexical and morphological levels will be observed.

Students are required to have a good acquaintance of the principles of Sociolinguistics and Historical Linguistics.

The course will offer a historical-cultural overview of Indian reality: the history of civilization, development of Tamil writing systems and literature, Tamil diglossia in historical perspective, contacts with other languages, ​​and civilizations.
In order to do that, Students will be also introduced to basic notions of Modern and Old grammar of Tamil. The teacher will provide transliterated texts and a glossary for personal practice and class readings. Students will be asked to analyse and discuss texts transmitted throughout a non-European writing system during classes and on their own as preparation to the exam.

Attendance is highly recommended.

Reading list available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r580TpXdUkaWo7IudMWUXJlctQtl5oJt/view?usp=sharing