Wednesday, Week 12

We returned and discussed quiz 3. I announced quiz 4 for Friday: it will cover the same material as quiz 3, with different texts AND it will ask students to identify texts from different ME dialects using the same kind of evidence.

Friday, Week 11, and Monday, Week 12

On Friday we did quiz 3--it will be returned and discussed next Wednesday. On Monday, we worked on ME dialects, using page 6 of the homework distributed in class (due on Friday).

Monday and Wednesday, Week 11

>We discussed the rest of the homework and I collected them.

We continued looking at differences between Old English and Middle English and among the Middle English dialects, using the handout illustrating differences among Middle English dialects.

There will be a quiz on Friday. It will consist of an OE and a ME version of a text and questions about how the text can be identified as OE or ME, like this (answers here).

Friday, Week 10

We started looking at a range of differences between Old English and Middle English and illustrations of differences among Middle English dialects.  We began looking at Chaucer's prologue to the Canterbury Tales

Monday and Wednesday, Week 10

On Monday, we talked about dialects in general and in Middle English in particular.

On Wednesday, class was cancelled, but there is a new homework assignment from HEL:

p. 109 question 6, using the website at the University http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/browse.html/ rather than the one in the question.
p. 139 questions 1-4

Homework is due in class on Monday, 28 March.

Friday, Week 9

We discussed the changes in phonology from the late OE period through the ME period, touching on the changes in morphology and the lexicon.

We did an attendance quiz.

Wednesday, Week 9 and Paper Topics for 554 Students

On Wednesday, we talked about the history of the period from late Old English (1000-1100 roughly) through the Middle English (1100-1500) and talked about how that history resulted in general cultural changes.

For students in English 554, I've written up some possible paper topics:

1. Here are several lexical or syntactic changes in progress happening in English now.
   a.   The development of “be all” and “be like” as forms marking quotation, as in “She was all ‘I won’t do that!’”
   b.  The development of “my bad” as a response to a mistake
   c.  The development of [iz] plurals for forms like processes and premises.
   
   Pick one of these changes in progress (or another one if you’ve observed one and confirmed it with me) and collect data about it: Collect all the live forms you can – privilege those in spontaneous speech, but include those found in writing, in dramatic presentations, in other pre-thought-out contexts. Who uses the form? Who doesn’t use it? Are people’s introspections about whether they use the form reliable? Does everyone use it in the same contexts? To mean the same things?
   
   
2.  Pick out a short text (500-1000 words) that exists in Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English (New Testament texts work well for this. It may be hard to find suitable texts outside of the Bible, but, for example, Boethius’ Consolations of Philosphy entirely or in part, was translated from Latin by Alfred the Great, Chaucer, and Elizabeth I. ) Select an interesting continuous section of each text of about 100 words (the same chunk for each version) and annotate it—for OE, for example, prepare the texts the way the class texts were prepared (give a gloss for the lexical meaning and then note the grammatical properties, gender, number and case for nouns, adjectives, and demonstratives; tense and agreement for verbs, etc). Any interesting or curious lexical uses, for example, should be noted. Then write a description of some of the ways in how the text is treated changes from OE to ME to EME. (You can compare EME to Present Day English if you like, but it isn’t required.)
   
   
3.  Read the introduction, the last chapter and at least one sample word study from Lewis’ Studies in Words. Following Lewis’ model, pick a word or groups of words and discuss its development in English (i.e., from Old English to Modern English, not back into Latin or Greek or Proto-Germanic).
   
   
4. Anything that shows change across time in English is fair game, but you have to get to approve a specific proposal (maximum 1 page), due by 1 pm on Friday, 25 April. (If you suspect that your proposal may need discussion, try to get in earlier so we can discussed it before the due date.)

Sunday, Week 8

• On Wednesday, we discussed homework #4.
• On Friday, we did quiz 2 and discussed the answers.

Monday, Week 8

We worked through an Old English version of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Gospel of Luke), discussing the syntax and lexicon as we go, using through a selected glossary.

Remember: Homework 4 is due Wednesday. Quiz 2 is scheduled for Friday.

Friday, Week 7

We finished working our way through the first eleven lines of the prolog to Beowulf.  Then using the homework distributed in class (due next Wednesday), we talked a bit about the next nine lines.

Wednesday, Week 7

We discussed some of the distinctive properties of OE alliterative poetry and then worked through the first nine lines of the prolog to Beowulf working out the structure of the sentences and noting the poetic properties of the lines.

You may want to visit http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/Beowulf.Readings/Beowulf.Readings.html to hear readings of parts of Beowulf which are presented in the generally accepted OE pronunciation.

Friday, Week 6

Today we visited the Oxford English Dictionary on-line.  We looked at the history of knight and knave (particularly interesting as both words began in the same semantic space and them shifted in opposite directions), and at boy and girl.

Reminder: As students at WSU, you have access to this website.
(1) Just go to the WSU libraries website (http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu),
(2) then click on the Griffin Catalog tab and search for Oxford English Dictionary. 
(3) When the search results show up, click on the Oxford English Dictionary [electronic resource] link.
(4) Then click on the Oxford English Dictionary -- Oxford Univ Pr Oxford English Dict link and
(5) log in with your network id and password.  
Then you will find yourself logged in at the OED on-line website.

Wednesday, Week 6

We worked through the Old English syntax practice handout.

We began to work through semantic change, talking about broadening/widening (generalization), narrowing (specialization), and other changes (amelioration, pejoration, other kinds of shifts including bleaching).

Monday, Week 6

We worked through homework #3 (answers here) and I concluded that another phonetics/orthography handout might be useful for the consonants (available here).

We just started working on the Old English syntactic data, distributed in class.

Note: At 4 pm on Tuesday, I updated the "Spelling and Pronunciation of Old English Consonants" handout (mostly adding some detail). If you have already downloaded this document, please take a look at the current version.

Friday, Week 5

We discussed and collected homework 2. We finished working through the Practice with OE Case handout.

Remember homework #3 is due in class on Monday.

Wednesday, Week 5

Reminder: Homework 2 (questions 1 and 2 on p. 77 of HEL) is due on Friday.
New: Homework 3 (distributed in class on Wednesday) is due next Monday.


We discussed the functions of cases in Old English, using the OE case handout, then went on to start identifying the functions of noun phrases in Old English in sentences.

Monday, Week 5

We finished the background history for Old English and worked through the phonology and orthography of OE and began looking at the morphology (starting with pronouns).

Homework: Questions 1 - 2 on p. 77 in HEL due in class on Friday.

Friday, Week 4

We did and discussed the first quiz.

We began discussing Old English chronology.

Wednesday, Week 4

We discussed and collected the homework.

I distributed a new phonetics handout and we discussed it briefly and then we did some more phonetics practice.

Quiz on Friday: The quiz on Friday will give you some transcribed English words you will have to identify, some groups of sounds you will have to characterize and some changes you will have to identify.  All quizzes are open book, open notes.

Tuesday, Week 4

Here are some more useful links:
http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAlab/IPAlab.htm (another IPA chart linked to sounds)
http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~danhall/phonetics/sammy.html (a cool moving sagittal view of the vocal tract, somewhat exaggerated, but memorable)
http://faculty.washington.edu/dillon/PhonResources/unidec.html (instructions for typing IPA symbols on your computer)
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/research/gsound/Eng/Database/Phonetics/Englishes/Home/HomeMainFrameHolder.htm (A wide range of English dialects recorded and transcribed; for more variation than you ever imagined check out this page)