Introductory Linguistic, Indo-European, and Old English Assignments

Our course text contains considerable information and presents it using terms and methods that are sometimes new to you. To help you read productively, Mr. McGowan has developed these assignment pages. Read them before tackling a reading assignment, and use them to help you direct your reading and to identify basic concepts and details he is emphasizing in our study of the English language.

Also note that writing assignments are due at the start of the class; dates refer to that day's class. E-mail assignments must be sent by 9:30 a.m. of the class day.

Ongoing

Topics: Backgrounds to linguistic research and the Oxford English Dictionary.

Reading: William Winchester, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary.

William Winchester's popular novelizing of the story of James Murray and William Minor is an entertaining read. We'll use it to give a sense of the background of the development of the Oxford English Dictionary, an important resource in our course. Mr. McGowan will refer to events in the book off and on in our course, and when we start using the OED seriously, this background reading will give our work a more human perspective.

      Treat this book as interesting light reading, but do complete sections and their on-line quizzes by the deadlines in the following timetable:

•3 June: Preface-Chapter 3.

•10 June: Chapters 4-5.

•13 June: Chapters 6-8.

•24 June: Chapters 9-11.

Wednesday, 29 May

Topics: Basic linguistic concepts, terms, and symbols; language and culture, linguistic change and its causes; dictionaries and computer helps.

Reading: Fennell 1-14 and phonology handout. Visit the websites of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and the American Heritage Dictionary available from Belk Library's electronic resources and our course links site.
Dictionary Exercise: Make up a question for a student to use to investigate one of our on-line dictionaries and provide an answer for it. Submit your written question and answer at the start of class.

Language shapes speakers' visions of reality. In this course, we learn new terms and symbols that allow us--even cause us--to distinguish the structures and rules of the English language and recognize how they have changed over space and time. These terms include competence and performance, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and orthography. We learn these by applying them and repeating different applications. Many terms in our course will be included in an interactive webpage glossary under construction at Mr. McGowan's website: http://www1.appstate.edu/~mcgowant/4660glos1.htm.

Language plays an interactive role in human cultures: By it we express political, social, and cultural concepts, affect behavior, and effect personal and social change. But social, political, and cultural change also affects language structures. Fennell describes some causes of language change.

Transmission of language from generation to generation and person to person also promotes change. A new generation of speakers may internalize rules differently. They may generalize a rule to cover more items or contexts than an earlier generation (analogy, e.g., knowed).

Dictionaries report scholars' observations about words in a language. Use Belk Library's Electronic Resources links to look over what the OED, ADH, and Webster's on line offer linguistic investigators. Think about how these resources can help our study.

Thursday, 30 May

Topics: Indo-European backgrounds, Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages, cognate words and theories about IE culture and grammar, Indo-European forms and sociolinguistics, interpreting IE information in the AHD.

Reading: Fennell 15-34 (skim 25-34) and 49-53.

Internet Activity: Visit the HEL ("History of the Language") website at <http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/hel/hel.html>.

E-mail Assignment: Learn to access and use your e-mail account on the university's computer system. Send an e-mail message introducing yourself to Mr. McGowan. His e-mail address is <mcgowanta@appstate.edu>. This message equates with a writing exercise.
WebCT quiz: Take the first quiz on the class's WebCT site.

Scholars in historical linguistics hypothesize a common parent language, Indo-European (IE), from which are descended English, Latin, Gaelic, and a large number of other languages. But not all human languages are Indo-European. Using the comparative method, scholars hypothesize relationships of IE languages and reconstruct structures of IE and its early descendant languages. This reading explains why comparative linguists hypothesize Indo-European as an ancestor language and how they reconstruct some of its characteristics, including its highly inflected system for marking grammatical information in words and the cultural and geographical implications of its lexicon.

Fennell summarizes important background to the Indo-European theory and it research. In discussing Grimm's and Verner's Laws, she uses consonant symbols: match as many up with your handout inventory, and make sure you know them and their sounds. Don't worry to much about the terms for the unusual symbols yet.

Look at the Indo-European roots appendix in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. (McGowan has posted a sample entry on our website.) Get a sense of how that dictionary signals forms and relationships.

Friday, 31 May

Topics: Germanic forms and changes; Anglo-Saxon backgrounds.

Reading: Fennell 34-43, 55-60, and 85-86.
Internet Activity: Go to our course Internet links page <http://www1.appstate.edu/~mcgowant/4660net.htm>. Use its clickable hypertext link to look at some Old English manuscripts.

Fennell describes many changes, but we'll focus on seven fundamental distinctive developments in Germanic:

• a common Germanic vocabulary
• phonological differences (vowel and consonant shifts, including Grimm's Law or the First Consonant Shift; fixed stress on the first syllable)
• grammatical differences (a two-tense verb system and weak and strong adjectives)
• a morphological feature (weak verbs using the dental suffix as a past-tense inflection).

Since Indo-European and Germanic never had writing systems, the only evidence for these generalizations is comparative linguistics and reconstruction. The nineteenth-century neogrammarians (German Junggrammatiker) contributed to the reconstruction of Indo-European and Germanic forms by comparing languages and theorizing about change patterns.

Before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, Britain was inhabited by the Britons, Celtic speakers who experienced an occupation by the Romans in 43. Latin, however, did not become the dominant language as it had in other parts of Europe. While it was used in some official and military contexts, Celtic dialects were spoken by most people. The invasion of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, however, resulted in the establishment of their West Germanic language as a superstratum language, the dominant language in most of England, except for Wales and parts of Scotland.

The Anglo-Saxon migrations to Britain provide further separation from other Germanic speech communities resulting in changes that characterize Old English. Old English belongs to the Low German branch of West Germanic. Our film describes its closeness to Frisian, and linguists propose an Anglo-Frisian branch of West Germanic.

Fennell lists seven distinctive characteristics of OE (59-60). We'll work at understanding these features. The most important is that OE was "synthetic or fusional, rather than analytic or isolating" and forms "were highly inflected" (59).Over time, Old English changes, losing much of its inflections.

OE has four principal dialects: West Saxon, Kentish, Mercian, and Northumbrian. Use the map in Fennell 57 to locate their geographical locations.

Monday, 3 June

Topics: Old English language structures: general features and phonology, OE noun morphology, adjective and definite article inflections and syntax.

Reading: Fennell 59-67, 72-73, and Capt. McGowan's item-arrangement grammar.

Writing Exercise: Complete OE noun exercise (10 points). (Do this exercise after your reading.)
WebCT quiz: Deadline for the first Professor and the Madman quiz, covering pp. ix-73.

We reread Fennell's main generaliztions about OE language structures. We need to get these seven features straight; however, remember that for all testing, you will have a copy of the item-arrangement grammar as a trot.

Fennell's discussion of OE phonology is difficult. Mr. McGowan wants you to develop the ability to understand these kind of explanations, not memorize them. Find one question you can ask about the phonology discussion. Try to stump Mr. McGowan.

Here's a set of grammatical categories that most of you know and which are essential to our working with OE phrases and sentences. You should be able to recognize a verb phrase and distinguish nouns phrases used as subject, direct object, indirect object, and subject complement (predicate nominative).

OE nouns are marked by inflections, suffixes with the grammatical meanings of case and number. Since the inflections appropriate to a noun depend on the class it is grouped with, these endings may also reveal information about its declension (class of group) and grammatical gender.

Some noun paradigms occupy the front top of our OE item-arrangement grammar handout; looking at them provides most of the information you need to understand about OE nouns. Dropping the -um off dative plurals may be the easiest way to determine the base to which inflections are attached. Notice though that in the Root Consonant declension, the vowel of the root changes in some cases; this change is called "i-mutation."

Case refers to the grammatical function or relationship of a noun in a construction. OE had five cases:

• nominative: subject, predicate complement
• genitive: possessives
• dative: indirect object
• accusative: direct object
• instrumental: special adverbial constructions and with certain prepositions.

A few verbs take genitive objects, and genitive, accusative, and dative forms also appear as objects of certain prepositions and in some adverbial constructions.

An example:

Cyning, used as subject, receives an empty inflection, the marking for nominative singular masculine a-stem nouns. Aldormannum, indirect object, to or for whom the action is done, takes the dative plural inflection -um for the root consonant or mutated plurals noun class. Oxan is the accusative plural of a masculine n-stem noun marked by the inflection -an. Note that -an is an inflection for a number of other cases in this class, but the meaning of the sentence and the accusative plural definite article ða clearly mark this noun phrase as direct object.

Inflections mark nouns for number (singular and plural) and case. OE, a highly inflected language, has a noun system with a number of classes and sets of inflections for each class (declensions). The a-stem masculine strong class includes the largest number of nouns. As the development of English continues, more nouns are included in it, and it is the source of the basic ME and ModE noun inflections.

Grammatical Gender. OE nouns possess grammatical gender, an arbitrary classification as masculine, feminine, or neuter not immediately based on sex or humanness. Wifmann 'woman' is, for example, masculine.

Using your item-arrangement grammar, you should be able to see that OE has a highly inflected morphological system and be able to talk about some of its characteristics. Mr. McGowan has simplified the pertinent characteristics of this system here. At the end of today's class, you should understand the contents of the above discussion of nouns and be able to describe differences between OE and ModE for these systems. In any testing, you will be able to consult a copy of the OE IA grammar handout.

Agreement. In OE, adjectives and definite articles agree with the nouns they modify in case, number, and grammatical gender. These features are signaled by inflections. The front middle of the grammar handout shows sets of endings and forms. Notice the large number of forms of the definite article needed for agreement In the example for case under nouns in column 1, the OE speaker used three different forms of the article.

Weak and Strong Adjectives. OE has two different sets of inflections for adjectives: weak and strong classes. In each of these sets, OE has inflections marking gender, case, and number. E.g., -es is the masculine genitive singular inflection for strong adjectives, while -an is the weak adjective inflection with these features (look at the chart). Whether the strong or weak form is generated depends on the structure of the noun phrase. If the structure matches [Determiner+ADJ+Noun], the adjective doesn't stand alone; it's "weak." In noun phrases in which no article or other determiner precedes the adjective or in predicate adjectives, the adjective stands alone; it's "strong." Examples: Se tila cyning 'the good kin'’; masculine nominative singular tila is weak. Wise cyningas sindon tile 'Wise kings are good.' Both masculine nominative plural adjectives are strong.

Adverbs. OE formed many adverbs by adding the instrumental inflection -e to adjectives. A major system of adjective derivation was to add -lic to a root; thus, many adverbs ended with -lice, a form that developed into the ModE ending -ly.

Tuesday, 4 June

Topics: OE personal pronouns, person, number, case, dual forms, agreement; verbs, and subject-verb agreement.

Read: Fennell 68-71 and Item-Arrangement Grammar.

Writing Exercise: Complete the OE sentence translation exercise.

Examining the personal pronoun paradigms (front bottom on the item-arrangement grammar) reveals that the personal pronoun system, unlike the noun system, loses less of its inflectional complexity in the history of English. Still OE personal pronouns have features lost or replaced in the history of the language:

• dual forms (group of two) in the 1st and 2nd persons
• separate singular and plurals for second person: þu and ge
• some separate accusative and datives, instead of one common objective form: e.g., 3rd masculine singular hine and him
• native h-forms in the 3rd plural
• agreement with grammatical gender of antecedent.

Other than these, you should be able to see the resemblances between OE forms and ModE forms developed from them.

Some verb inflections and classes are shown in the paradigms on the back of the item-arrangement grammar. Again with your item-arrangement grammar in hand, you are able to see the highly inflected verb systems in OE. Notice that subject-verb agreement is much stronger in OE than in ModE where we only mark the 3rd person singular present. Observe that the past tense forms of weak verbs get a -d- (or sometimes -t-) in their inflection, the dental suffix of Germanic past forms. See that strong verbs have a change of internal vowel from present to past (vowel gradation or ablaut).

Agreement. Verbs receive inflections so they agree with subjects in person and number.

Inflections. With a few exceptions, all verbs have the same present tense inflections. Anomalous verbs (e.g., to be) are significant exceptions. Past inflections differ depending on the type of verb to which they are attached. To find the stem to which inflections are attached, drop the -an or -ian ending of the infinitive form.

Verb Types. With a few exceptions, OE verbs are either strong or weak.

Weak Verbs form their past (preterit) by adding a dental suffix to the stem. (Germanic languages differ from other Indo-European languages because of this morphological feature.) OE verbs add -ed-, -d-, or -od- as past tense morphemes, and then another inflection to signal person and number. E.g., in ic fremede 'I performed,' -d- (the dental suffix) signals [+past] for this weak verb and final -e signals [first singular]; in fremedon, -on shows [plural].

Strong verbs have an internal vowel change (vowel gradation or ablaut) that signals past. Look at the paradigm for singan. The change from i to a signals the past in the first and third singular and to u in the past plural and second singular and past participle. The chart in Baugh (59) shows characteristic internal vowel changes for different classes of strong verbs which are labeled by a numeral. The weak verbs use a slightly different set of inflections to signal person and number from that used by strong verbs.

Mood. In OE, different inflections apply to verbs in the indicative, subjunctive (Subj.), and imperative (Imp.) moods. Verbs in subordinate clauses expressing condition contrary to fact, possibility, and a few other senses are marked as subjunctive in OE. Imperative mood is used in commands. Notice that the OE imperative (Imp.) has different singular and plural forms.

Wednesday, 5 June

Topics: Old English vocabulary and lexical development: new concepts, borrowing, and word formation. Latin and Norse influences.

Reading: Fennell 77-79 and 86-93; handout "Searching The American Heritage Dictionary."

Writing Assignment: Use the American Heritage Dictionary search capabilities to find two Old Norse or Scandinavian words borrowed into English during the Old or Middle English period. Make sure the ON forms are sources for an English word, not just cognates of it. Report on your two words in a short paragraph. Use linguistic conventions such as underlining or italics and single quote marks in your writing. (10 points.)

Old English tended to use internal borrowing--compounding and affixing (derivation)--to produce new words for the new concepts introduced by Christianity, Latin education, and other cultural influences, although it did borrow some from Latin. The Anglo-Saxons borrowed very little from the Celtic language of the Britons: basically only some placenames and a small number of topographic terms. OE, however, had a peculiar relation with Old Norse, the language of the Viking settlers, because OE and ON speakers seem to have been able to understand each other. Two important grammatical influences of ON are the th-forms of the third plural personal pronoun and the {S₃} morpheme of the third present singular verb form.

Thursday, 6 June

Topics: More on Dictionaries; review of Section I materials for examination on Friday, 7 June.

Reading: Look over the basic format for entries in our three on-line dictionaries: OED, AHD, and Merriam-Webster's. Begin reviewing for the examination by looking over your notes, the reading introductions, and the study helps.

Friday, 7 June

Section One Examination: Examination on basic linguistic, Indo-European, Germanic, and Old English materials, and American Heritage Dictionary format and methods.

Reading and Study: Course WebCT helps and your notes.

Examination Format: Fifty multiple choice questions covering material from our reading, class discussion, and course activities. See sample questions in WebCT course review pages.

Use your assignments sheets, the class webpages, and classnotes for review. Form study groups.You will have a copy of the item-arrangement grammar to work with during the examination.