WiSe 23/24: PS-History of English II: Middle English
Kirsten Middeke
Kommentar
This seminar introduces students to the history of the English language, with a special focus on the Middle English period, i.e. the period between the Viking Age and the Norman Conquest in the 11th century, which had brought English into close contact with Scandinavian and French, and the Renaissance, during which English was to become a language of science and international communication.
Students will gain knowledge of the socio-historical events relevant to the external history of the English language (e.g. the different influences of French and Scandinavian in the north and in the south of Britain following the Scandinavian and French conquests) and study the internal history of the language in detail (sound change, morphological change, syntactic change, lexical change). They will be introduced to the most important sources of historical language data and their analysis (text editions, dictionaries, thesauri, corpora) and will be given research tasks on all levels of linguistic analysis.
The exam will be an academic paper of 2000 words based on relevant academic literature and an original empirical investigation. Towards the end of the course, students will create and present academic posters (in groups) in preparation for their individual term papers.
Credit requirements are:
- regular participation in discussions, based on weekly reading assignments, translation tasks and/or other linguistic exercises
- active participation, including the design and presentation (in groups) of an academic poster in preparation for the term paper
- an academic paper of c2000 words
16 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung