Home

Welcome to the course site for The History of English (LING 390) at the College of Staten Island for the Fall 2020 semester.

News!

18 November: This year’s Word of the Year vote is free to attend! Register here. Livestreamed on December 17th from 7 to 9pm.

18 October: I put together Blog Post Guidelines. These include more information on how to write your blog posts, a grading rubric for the remaining four blog posts, and examples.

17 October: I put together the Final Paper Guidelines. Although the final paper is not due until 11:59pm on 16 December, I recommend taking a look at these guidelines as soon as possible.

 

Class meets on Wednesdays beginning at 6:30pm. The url for our livestream is https://zoom.us/j/5545397081 and the password is “linguistic” (without the quotation marks).

This course examines the development of the English language, from its prehistoric Indo-European roots through to today. Topics we’ll cover include:

  • Anglo-Saxon runes and once-common letters like ð, þ, ȝ, and ſ
  • Old English riddles and legends
  • Middle English & the Anglo-Norman influence
  • Early Modern texts, like witch-hunting pamphlets and Shakespeare’s plays
  • Different varieties of English today

We will discuss elements of phonology, syntax, morphology, and historical linguistics, but no background in linguistics is required for this course.

After a sufficient introduction to a range of topics in the development of English, students will choose one to explore in greater depth as a research topic. Students will chronicle their research with a series of blog posts on this site, culminating in a final research paper.