SoSe 23: PS-History of English II: From the Age of Migrations to the Age of Explorations
Kirsten Middeke
Comments
This seminar introduces students to the history of the English language. We will cover the period between the coming of Germanic dialects to Britain and the spread of English around the Globe and its subsequent evolution into different national varieties. Students will gain knowledge about the socio-historical events relevant to the external history of the English language and study the internal history (sound change, morphological change, syntactic change, lexical change). Students 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. Data elicitation (active cqp) will not be expected; all data will be provided.
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.
The seminar is complemented by an obligatory lecture course.
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
- an academic paper of c2000 words
14 Class schedule
Regular appointments