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.
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