The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. --James D. Nicoll |
Meetings Tues/Thurs 1:00-2:15
Permanent room Herring Hall 100
Instructor contact Office, Herring Hall 209; Tel. 348-6225; email, kemmer@rice.edu
As far as possible, students will be encouraged to make their own
investigations and discuss their findings and questions about words in
class. Students will work to increase their mastery of English
vocabulary from the technical, literary, scientific and other domains
by acquiring recurrent morphemes and words incorporating them; and by
generally increasing their awareness of the structure, history, and use of
English words.
In addition to assigned readings specified on the syllabus,
students are responsible for reading class materials on the web (below) as they
become activated. Exams will cover readings, class
discussions, and these class web materials. Quizzes (total 10) will
cover the Morpheme Sets contained in an Appendix of the Denning and
Leben textbook.
See the Course
Schedule for the 'do-by' dates for readings and assignments, and
dates for quizzes and exams.
Happy New Year!
You should be able to see your final points total for the class as
well as your scores on the quizzes and exams and the Word Journal.
Hopefully you will have received your final grade reports already,
if not, send me email and I'll tell you your grade.
The WebCT staff tells me that they are taking down the Fall 2004
classes from the web. I asked to keep ours up for a while
so that you could all look at your grade details.
I don't know how long it will stay up on the web though.
The nine morpheme sets are posted to the WebCT page. They are the same as
the morpheme sets in the textbook. The textbook has a big general
glossary for all the morphemes in the morpheme sets.
Oxford English
Dictionary, Online Edition. Accessible to the Rice community.
Note: On-line dictionaries do not give sufficient information on
etymologies to be used as the source for etymologies presented
in class. Use the American Heritage or other large desk dictionary
for this purpose.
See also Online and Other References.
Questions about
words in English
Midterm #2 Review
Honor Code issues
Students are welcome, in fact encouraged, to talk about their Word
Journals with classmates, as long as they don't use for their journals words
collected from other Ling 215 students (current or former). Some
people will come up with some of the same words independently, but
that's OK if you caught the word yourself. Your own journal entry for
the word should be original of course.
To avoid unclarity
about academic standards relating to use of the World Wide Web, these
standards are posted on the following links:
Disabilities
Additional class links
Flashcards As an additional resource, you can test yourself
on the morphemes in each set by using Jenn Drummond's Morpheme Flashcards.
Harold, King of
the English A short essay on a novel interpretation of the
Bayeux Tapestry, by Mathias Ricken.
New Word Journal Interactive, 1998-2002 Web interface. Designed by Jenn
Drummond. Click on the link under Output near the bottom, "View a list
of existing entries", to see the collection of words.
New
Words in English, 1996-97 A collection of new words
(neologisms) begun in Fall 1996 from Word Journal entries by students in this class.
© 2004 Suzanne Kemmer
Instructor office hours Tues/Thurs 10:45-11:50
TA contact Andrew Harrison, Hanszen College, andrewh@rice.edu
Course description
This course applies linguistic principles to the study of the English
vocabulary. We will examine the rich stock of morphemes, or meaningful
elements, in English words, and observe how these combine to derive
much of the vocabulary of English. Other topics include
the development of the English vocabulary, derivational processes,
articulatory (i.e. pronunciation) processes, etymology (word histories),
sound change and meaning change, the linguistic relations of English,
sources of new words, usage and variation, and slang. No previous
experience with Linguistics is required.
Course objectives
By the end of the course, the student should
Course requirements
Midterm #1 20%
Midterm #2 20%
1 final exam 30%
ca. 10 vocab quizzes 5%
Word Journal 20%
Participation 5%
Jan. 10, 2005 Announcements
Text and reference materials
Textbook
Keith Denning and William Leben,
English Vocabulary Elements, New York: Oxford Unversity Press,
1995. (First and only edition.)
Desk reference dictionary
The American Heritage Dictionary or
other good college-level desk dictionary (not pocket dictionary). I
recommend you have such a dictionary in your room, for this course and all
other reference purposes.
Comprehensive on-line dictionary
Two online versions of the Oxford English Dictionary. I have no idea
why there are two online versions, in slightly different formats. I
prefer the first one. You have to be using an on-campus computer to
access them.
OED Online.
Accessible to the Rice community.
Basic on-line dictionary
WWWebster's Online
Dictionary. Guide to using this dictionary is
at Using the Dictionary. Includes
things like how to do wild-card searches, using search results, etc.
Course organization and guide links
Course schedule
All quizzes and exams in the course are closed book, closed notes,
closed mouths, and no internet surfing during exam.
Any student with a disability requiring accommodations in this class
is encouraged to contact me after class or in my office. Contact
also the Disabled Student Services office in the Ley Student Center to
find out how they can be of further assistance.
Course content links
The other web materials for this course have been organized into a new
website,
Words in
English.
The relevant pages from this site will be linked below as we come to
them. You can also surf around on the new site, which is available to
the world as a stand-alone website with an organizational logic
independent of this course. See the site map.
Class collections of neologisms
Neologisms,
Fall 2003. The most recent collection. Your Word Journals will
have this format.
Outside links
(for a fuller list, see the Online and Other
References Link above):
World Wide Words
Word.A.Day
Word Detective
Word Play
Neologisms from The Independent
Turns of Phrase
Old English Links
Parody: Hrodulf Hrandeor
The Anagram Genius Server
Last modified 10 Jan 05