Overview

1. Studying the History of English.
2. Causes and Mechanisms of Language Change.
3. The Indo-European Language Family and Proto-Indo European.
4. Germanic and the Development of Old English.
5. The Sounds and Words of Old English.
6. The Grammar of Old English.
7. The Rise of Middle English: Words and Sounds.
8. The Grammar of Middle English, the Rise of a Written Standard.
9. Eighteenth-Century Prescriptivism. and the Sounds and Morphosyntax of Early Modern English.
10. Modern English, Varieties of English (I) and English as Global phenomenon
11. Varieties of English (II) & Comparing British & American English

Assessment Strategy

-threshold -D: Student has achieved the minimum acceptable standard of understanding and/or knowledge in all the learning outcomes. Student can demonstrate a minimum level of understanding of the basic concepts and be able to apply them to data with some degree of accuracy.

-good -B: Student has achieved a better-than-average standard of understanding and/or knowledge in all learning outcomes, and has a clear and accurate understanding of concepts; ability to apply concepts to data critically and thoughtfully; evidence of wide reading and clear and accurate reference to source materials; free from misunderstanding and errors of content; free from irrelevant material.

-excellent -A: Student has achieved a thorough standard of understanding and/or knowledge in all learning outcomes; or student has demonstrated an exceptional level of achievement in one or more learning outcomes together with a good overall standard: student has achieved a thorough understanding of the subject, both in terms of content and theory; student is able to apply concepts clearly and accurately; substantial evidence of critical and original thought and analysis; clear, logical argument; high level of communicative competence; free from irrelevant material and errors of spelling and punctuation; evidence of extensive reading beyond basic texts and clear and accurate references to source material.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will be able to discuss the basic linguistic structure of Old English (OE), Middle English (ME) and Early Modern English (EModE) and to successfully compare and contrast them in terms of major morpho-syntactic and phonological differences.

• Students will be able to discuss, from an informed perspective, the social contexts and mechanisms of language change.

• Students will know how to identify and explain general linguistic features of Old and Middle English.

• Students will know the linguistic concepts necessary for understanding how English has changed over time.

• Students will understand the principles of etymology, semantic change and the status of evidence for English historical linguistics.