663Z Spring 2026 A Brief History of Language

663Z  A Brief History of Language
Four sessions
Instructor: Tom Manteuffel
Thursdays, 2:15—3:40, Apr. 23—May 14
It's likely our most important innovation, a tool unlike any other, and the deep history of its evolution is only now yielding up its secrets. When and how, and why did language appear and evolve? How did one particular language, proto-Indo-European come to push out many alternatives to become today's global lingua franca? How does language really work? Is it innate in some way? We'll uncover some fresh answers to all of these questions and more.
Tom Manteuffel is a long-time OLLI teacher on a variety of subjects, most recently on The Brain and the Body and on Shakespeare's The Tempest. He has graduate degrees in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.