Discovering Unwritten Stories

This course is designed to provide a theoretical frame and language reconstruction training in Toponymy and Toponomastics, both at the level of the historical reconstruction of the origins and original meanings of place names all over the world (in different historical and geographical contexts) and in the evaluation of the relations between Toponymy and human societies. Students will be provided with an overall view on the study of Diachronic Toponymy (undocumented and endangered linguistic contexts) and Historical Toponomastics (linguistic contexts with available historical sources and records) and on their relevance in the reconstruction of proto-languages and in hypothesizing the existence of pre-languages.