|
Welcome to NR's History of
English page!
This page contains
study materials and assignments for the course
Introduction to the History of English (Summer Term 2002).
NEW
(20/03/2002):
Texts for reading
over Easter (can
be collected from my office on the second floor)
·
Ritt,
Nikolaus (2000): Selfish sounds and linguistic evolution. Vienna.
(pp. 21-42)
·
Barber,
Charles (1993): The English language: a historical introduction.
Cambridge. (pp. 58-80)
·
Lass,
Roger (1982): The Shape of English. London.
(chapter 2)
Some questions for
the upcoming mid-term test (HTML
- PDF)
Please forgive that the construction of this site is still in progress.
Just like our course, as a matter of fact. Soon, you will also find the
following items here:
·
A
written summary of the introductory class.
·
An
HTML-version of the slides that were shown during the first two sessions.
·
Suggestions
for further reading, in case there is a topic that you would like to pursue
in greater depth.
These items will be
prepared and published before the Easter break. Please bookmark the site
and surf in regularly to see what’s new.
Best wishes
N. Ritt
P.S.: To get an idea of
some of the things you’ll see here, take a look at sample items from last
term’s site:
It is still in the construction
phase and presently offers the following pieces.
- An HTML version of the slides that
were shown in the first session. They deal with he evolution of the
language faculty? To see them, click here.
- The solution to the first assigment,
i.e. the phonological reconstruction of three lines from Chaucer's Wife
of Bath's Tale. It comes as an RTF file and has the phonetic
characters embedded. This means it might take some time to download.
If you want it, click here.
: some of you may have problems interpreting
the embedded phonetic characters in that file. In that case, you NEED to
download and install the true type font offered below. If this is
impossible for you, please send me an email with your postal address and
I'll mail you a hard copy of the assignment.
: in order to resolve the annoying font issue, I have created a
pdf-version of the assignment. It is readable with Adobe's Acrobat reader,
which is freeware and readily available from public ftp sites such as
Twocows. Since the PDF writer our department owns has somehow been lost,
however, I had to use a shareware programme, which overwrites some of the
text with a warning notice that the file was produecd with an evaluation
copy of the programme. This is far from ideal, I know, but if you combine
the rtf- and the pdf-versions you will be able to get a good idea of what
the file is supposed to look like. Sorry, but this is the best I have been
able to come up with so far. So, to acces the pdf-version, click here.
- The solution to the second assigment,
in which the grammatical morphemes in the first six lines of the Wife
of Bath's Prologue were to be identified. Click here.
- A few comments on the third
assignment. Obviously, there isn't anything like a 'solution' in its
case. Click here.
- A true type font with phonetic
characters. To download it, click here.
Hope
you'll find the materials useful. Best wishes. NR
|
