Internet Resources for Language Study

This webpage lists some links that are helpful to beginning lingustics students. The dictionary links are helpful resources for English 4660 students. Look over these links and investigate more about language research.

Phonemic Helps | Dictionaries | English Language Information | Language Analysis Software | Historical Linguistics |

Phonemic Helps

• Phonemic Symbols
  Kevin Russell, a linguist at the University of Manitoba, has developed a website on phonetic symbols and problems in transcribing spoken language for his general phonetics course. Until we develop a local webpage, visiting Professor Russell's site might help some of you. Keep in mind he is representing Canadian English and that some of his symbols are slightly different from our course set. He even has exercises and hints on working with symbols.

Dictionaries

• Oxford English Dictionary website
  This website is the base for an on-line Oxford English Dictionary and a set of search engines for research in the OED. The OED is the definitive historical dictionary
• American Heritage Dictionary website
  This electronic version of an important descriptive dictionary of American English includes a set of search capabilities including entry word, etymology, and full text searches. It is part of a suite of resources that are helpful language researchers including a thesaurus and quotation collections.
• Merriam-Webster on-line
  This Internet edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary provides definitions and etymological information on words. Use it to trace word etymologies quickly.You also can perform interesting searches on it.
• Dictionary of American Regional English
  This set of pages on the Dictionary of American Regional English explains the project, its use of a specially organized map, and the organization and information in a sample entry on poached egg. Belk Libary has a print version of this dictionary in the Reference Room.

English Language Information

• Associated Press World English articles
  This set of articles discusses the status of English as World English, different varieties, and the effects of their use in different domains.
  
• English on the Net
  This Associated Press webpage includes links to some useful resources on American English and World Englishes, including dictionaries and sites on World English varieties.

Analytic Software

• Word Frequency Indexer
  This handy service programmed by Catherine Ball of Georgetown Univesity allows you to analyze a text by the number of times a word appears in it. It can support many kinds of literary and linguistic projects.

Historical Linguistsics & HEL Courses

• History of the Language website
  This website links to linguistic and historical texts websites.
  
• Edwin Duncan's Website
  Edwin Duncan, a teacher at Towson State University, provides helpful links to Web resources on the English language and medieval literature. He also includes material for his own History of the English Language course.
  
• Catherine Ball's Old English Pages
  One of Catherine Ball's specialties is teaching Old English so she has arranged a helpful website with links to all kinds of material on Old English, including links to manuscripts for students to look over.
• Old English Writing
  
  • Two websites that include samples of OE writing are at the University of Virginia and Northwestern University. Peter Baker provides a sample OE alphabet for students in his OE courses at UVa. Catharine Regan has organized an interactive page where a student can recognize OE graphs in a manuscript. Both sites offer other interesting OE information and activities for Anglo-Saxonphiles.
• Lowlands Languages Website
  This website includes links to pages on English, its Scots dialect, English-based pidgins and creoles, and its Low German relatives, including Frisian, Dutch, Low Saxon, and Africaans.
  
• An On-line Old English course
  This website includes lessons on Old English grammar. Some of the early lessons give exercises in applying some of the ideas from our simplified investigation of OE's synthetic grammar and its highly inflected morphology.
• Harvard Chaucer Website
  Excellent set of webpages for Middle English and Chaucer, including individual tales, cultural background topics, literary contexts, and Middle English language (even pronunciation samples).

This resource page is still being developed. Send suggestions to Thomas McGowan. Last revision: 11 June 02.