ENG6361F: History and structure of the English language I

|| Class web encyclopedia||

||Updated schedule|| ||Resources||

||Evaluation|| ||OE assignment|| ||ME assignment|| ||Encyclopedia article|| ||Take-home test||

Course administrivia

§ Location: University College 256 (east wing, ascend 'dragon stair', turn right).

§ Times:Wednesdays 4:10-6.

§ Instructor: Professor Carol Percy

§ Office: New College, Wetmore Hall 125 (Huron & Willcocks).

§ Office hours:  Mondays 3-4, Tuesdays 4:15-5, Thursdays 11:15-12, or by appointment.

Mailbox: Submit work to me in person, or to the Wetmore Hall porter, New College

§ (Call 978-2477 for hours: current meal breaks 11:30-12:30, 6:30-7:30)

§ Web: http://cpercy.artsci.utoronto.ca/teaching.htm

§ Telephone:978-4287

§ Email: cpercy”at sign”chass.utoronto.ca

Course overview

This introductory course will study the language from its Germanic roots through its earliest recorded  forms  to  the  first  printed texts of 1476. We  will spend approximately equal time on Old English (6 weeks) and Middle English (6 weeks), emphasizing vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. In the Middle English section, some time will be spent on the influence of foreign languages, multilingualism in medieval England, and the rise of English and of standard English.

Each class will consist of a lecture from me, and then of a collective analysis of the text of the day, found in the Millward workbook. I’ll be guiding you to find specific examples in the texts of whatever I’ve been lecturing about most recently.

There are 4 short assignments. Indeed, the workload for this course is notoriously heavy, but each of the brief assignments has been selected in order to introduce and to exercise specific content and skills.

          The course focusses on the ‘internal’ history of Old and Middle English: you’ll be comparing the structures of Old English and PDE; telling a story about lexical changes within a semantic field between Old and Middle English; and applying all of your linguistic knowledge in a brief take-home test.

However, you will have an opportunity to conduct research on an aspect of the ‘cultural’ history of early English and to disseminate the results of your research as a ‘web encyclopedia article’. For examples of work by your predecessors, see

http://cpercy.artsci.utoronto.ca/courses/HELEncyclopedia.htm

I will be suggesting topics very soon (some derived from your responses on the ‘questionnaire’!), but am happy to work with you to come up with one that suits us both.

By the end of the course I hope you will be in confident command of

• the most important developments in the history of Old and Middle English
• their impact on the structures and anomalies of Present-Day English
• the best reference works, print and electronic, for the English language and its history
• some general principles of language structure, variation, contact, and change
• much irrelevant but memorable information

I hope that you will be able to apply what you have learned in ways that I cannot imagine– in other courses, when teaching ESL, or during and after odd conversations. If somebody ever asks you whether the lock in wedlock has sinister implications , or why things that are flammable and inflammable are equally likely to burst into flame, or why adjectives like asleep and aloft can’t premodify their nouns (*the asleep students), you will know where and how to look f or the answers.

Readings and resources

There is no course pack this year. The required course texts have been ordered to the U of T Bookstore at St George and College. They are

• C M Millward’s A Biography of the English Language (2^nd ed, 1996)
• the Workbook to accompany it (bundled together)

You must read the assigned chapters carefully in order to come to class prepared to ask questions and participate in class discussion. The class discussion will not be intelligible without a prior reading of the assigned material. If the material seems particularly daunting, go to short-term loan and read the section from Crystal’s Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2^nd ed. (2003).

There’s an online booklist for the course if you get really hooked, at http://cpercy.artsci.utoronto.ca/courses/367book.htm

Many of these books (ones you will need for assignments 1 and 2) are on short-term loan (Robarts library, third floor) under ENG367Y (the full-year undergrad HEL course I teach). Choose ‘short-term loan’ from the ‘catalogue options’ on the left-hand side of the web page for the online U of T library catalogue:

http://webcat.library.utoronto.ca/

You may wish for more advanced information at some times during the course. TheCambridge History of the English Language, vols. 1 (OE) and 2 (ME) [PE 1072 C36 STL] is usually your best bet for leads on further research. The e-index to conjure with is Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, though the MLA and ABELL aren’t too bad.

For your assignments, it is essential for you to have easy and frequent access both to the internet and to online resources that are often restricted to U of T users. The Oxford English Dictionary and many other resources can be found in “HELL”:

http://cpercy.artsci.utoronto.ca/hell

or for Netscape users

http://cpercy.artsci.utoronto.ca/hell/alt_index.htm

Methods of evaluation

You’ll get more information about each assignment.

• Participation (10%): regular, informed, courteous. Your completion of the homework exercises from Millward will be recognized in this category.
• 10^th November. Old English transcription and commentary (20%). Your commentary on a very short passage of OE prose will outline the extent to which it exemplifies similarities and differences between OE and PDE lexicon, semantics, orthography, morphology, and syntax. The passage will be accompanied by a PDE translation.
• 3rd December (and up to 1 pm on Sunday the 5th). Middle English vocabulary (20%) (1) Tell a plausible and engaging tale about semantic change between OE and ME within a specific/very limited semantic field (e.g. the interaction between the ME loanwords hi/story and the native word tale) or about semantic variation and/or change within ME (the differentiation of cattle and chattel, which are loanwords from different dialects of French). (2) Briefly, assess the usefulness for this assignment of such reference works as the Oxford English Dictionary, the Dictionary of Old English, Bosworth-Toller’s OE dictionary, the Middle English Dictionary.
• 15^th December. Take-home test (20%): In the past, your forerunners have had to do some of the following (1) translate some Old English, (2) put some OE and ME passages in chronological order and rationalize the choice, (3) and/or find examples in passages of OE and ME of some of the linguistic changes that we have charted, (4) find relics of OE and/or ME in PDE. You will get the take-home test in class on 1^st December.
• 15^th December (draft--deadline extended)/5^th January (final version). Web encyclopedia article (2 x 15% = 30%): An engaging summary of existing scholarship on a particular HEL topic, in no more than 1000 words + select list of resources. Think of it as an encyclopedia entry that you are writing for The Next Generation – and as your chance to work on a topic that acknowledges the intersection between the "internal" and "external" history of English. You can choose a topic from the list I’ll provide, or make a case for your own. You should be working on this through the term. I’ll be delighted to inferfere at all stages of the process. For past examples, see
• http://cpercy.artsci.utoronto.ca/courses/HELEncyclopedia.htm
• Your first draft (you choose the deadline: any time before 15^th December) will be worth half the grade. I’ll have comments back to you a week later, by email if necessary
• Your final version should incorporate your responses to my suggestions for revision/development, and of course your own subsequent thoughts on the topic. I’ll accept this any time up to January 5^th.

Because the workload in this course is equally noxious for all, I do not generally give extensions. (Of course, if the reasons are extraordinary, then I will. Talk to me.)

Assignments are due by 6pm on the due date, to the Wetmore Hall porter or to me in person.

The late penalty is 2% off per weekday, to a maximum of 20%; not accepted after 2 weeks.
ENG 6361F: Schedule

Readings:

Millward = A Biography of the English Language, 2^nd ed. 1996. [Course text]

Crystal = Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2^nd ed. [PE 1072 C68 STL]

Crystal is optional: its broad overview complements Millward’s riddling analysis, and there are pretty pictures.

Schedule

Date	Topic	Reading
September 15	Overview
Friday 17^th September Hart House Library (2^nd floor), 730 PM	Canadian English	A talk by Katherine Barber, the editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary
September 22^nd	Indo-European and Germanic roots	Millward ch. 4: 44-73 MW 4.5 and 4.6
September 29^th	Old English: outer history, dialects graphics	Crystal ch. 2, ch. 3: 8-17, 28-29 Millward ch. 5: 76-82, 89-93, 132-3, MW5.5, 5.21 Old English Aerobics
October 6^th	OE lexicon: wordformation and loanwords	Crystal ch. 3: 22-27 Millward ch. 5: 115-32 HW MW 5.16, 17, 19
October 13^th	OE semantics OE phonology	Crystal ch. 3: 18-19 Millward ch. 5: 82-89 HW MW 5.4 Old English Aerobics: i-mutation
October 20^th	OE morphology: pronouns and nouns	Crystal ch. 3: 20-21 Millward ch. 5: 94-106 HW MW 5.8, 5.10 (6-10 only), 5.11 (1-4 only) Old English Aerobics: elements of the sentence
October 27^th	OE morphology: verbs	MWHW 5.15 (A, B 1-10)
November 3rd	OE morphology: prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions OE syntax and (not covered in class, but have a look anyway because it's interesting and perhaps even useful) poetic syntax	Millward ch. 5: 107-115 Further reading/follow-up questions: Bruce Mitchell, Old English Syntax; and various volumes of the Cambridge History of the English Language.
November 10^th	Middle English: outer history, lexicon, semantics: pig vs pork	Crystal ch. 4: 30-31, 46-9, 54-55. Millward ch. 6: 142-6, 195-211
NOVEMBER 10^th: OE transcription and commentary due
November 17^th	ME dialects, morphology (nouns and verbs)	Crystal ch. 4: 32-3, 44-5, 50-3 Millward ch. 6: 162-181, 211-216. MWHW: 6.8 (1-7, correcting green to grene in #5); 6.10 (1-3, just to get the point); and read the texts in 6.16 carefully for next week.
November 24^th	ME phonology, and reading Chaucer. Not covered: graphics Resources for phonemic transcription: charts and exercises	Crystal ch. 4: 40-3 Millward ch. 6: 146-162 MWHW: 6.3 (#7-10), 6.4 (I, first column).
December 1^st	ME syntax	Millward ch. 6: 181-195
DECEMBER 3rd (6pm)-5th (1pm): ME semantic field story due DECEMBER 1^st: Take-home test received (in class)
December 8^th	ME syntax continued. Chaucer, "The Reeve's Tale" (My principal task: can we infer the function of his famous representation of northern dialect?)
DECEMBER 15 ^th: Last due date for ‘draft’ of the web encyclopedia article
DECEMBER 15^th: Take-home test due (no extensions)

JANUARY 5th Final version of ‘Web’ encyclopedia article due.

Please bring the Millward workbook to every class.

Homework exercises from the Millward workbook will be announced in class.

If you miss a class, please ask a friend rather than me for information about what you have missed. Thanks.