Course Description
The development of present English through the stages of Old English, Middle English, and early Modern English. Study of elementary phonetics, phonemics, sound change, and dialect variation.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will be responsible for a more extensive syllabus, for secondary reading, and for more ambitious, sophisticated writing.
Athena Title
HIST ENG LANG
Prerequisite
LING 2100 or ENGL(LING) 3030 or CMLT 2111 or CMLT 2210 or CMLT 2212 or CMLT 2220 or CMLT 2500 or ENGL 2310 or ENGL 2320 or ENGL 2330 or ENGL 2340 or ENGL 2400
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
At the end of the course, students will have examined the traditional stages of the history of the English language: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Present-day English. Students will focus on the general sound, word, grammar, and spelling changes within the language, as well as related cultural and sociohistorical events. In the process, as they learn more about the language's past, they will think about the meaning and implications of the language's present and future. Throughout the course they will work to establish the connections between the historical events and features that they are studying and the state/status of Present-day English. In the end, they are expected to think critically about texts in order to analyze, synthesize, and build texts--including their own.
Topical Outline
Introduction (e.g., Features common to all languages, changes in languages, demarcating the history of English, evaluating sources of information); Phonology (e.g., production of speech, phonemes and allophones, prosody); Indo-European and other Major Language Families of the World; Old English; Middle English; Early Modern English; Present-day English featuring American English; and English Around the World. Specific topics vary by instructor and at different times. Periodically during the semester, students will perform a number of graded tasks, including some combination of tests and out-of-class papers. Exams will require essays as well as objective questions and problems. Substantial out-of-class writing will be required, whether in essay form or in written responses to problems, amounting to c. 20 pages by the end of the term.