During the proseminar the following topics will be broached:
- Language universals and phenomena of linguistic change and their explanation
- The Indo-European proto-language and its reconstruction (the "comparative method")
- Old English (Anglo-Saxon) as a member of the Germanic languages
- Old English (grammatical and phonological sketch, text samples)
- Middle English (grammatical and phonological sketch, text samples)
- Early Modern English (grammatical and phonological sketch, text samples)
- Modern developments
At the beginning of the course, a script with course materials (definitions, comparative tables, grammatical sketches, text samples with interlinear translation and phonetic transcription, maps, charts etc.) will be distributed in digital form.
Seminar papers and presentations:
Topics for papers and presentations can be chosen from the above areas of study.
The focus of a presentation or paper should be on one or two aspects of linguistic change between two stages of language development, e.g. "From Indoeuropean to Old Germanic / Old English: changes in verbal morphology", "From Old English to Middle English: Changes in the vowel system," "Dutch borrowings in Early Modern English" etc.
Papers should always include a sample text (minimum 10 lines in A4 format) with a phonetic/ phonemic translation, interlinear translation and thorough analysis. Papers must follow the general guidelines of the department.
Presentations should include a handout (A4, not more than 1 page). A pdf-version of the presentation should be sent to the teacher beforehand (in case of compatibility problems with the LCD-projector).
The main focus will be on linguistic issues, especially phenomena of linguistic change, so historical overviews can be reduced to a minimum. The transcriptions should be in IPA. |
