Last modified 23 Nov 08
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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 MWF 10:00-10:50
Classroom Humanities Bldg. room 117
Instructor contact Office, Herring Hall 209; Tel. 348-6225;
email, kemmer AT rice.edu
Instructor office hours MW 11:00-12:00, Th 3-4, and by appt.
TA contact Soyeon Yoon, soyeon.yoon AT rice.edu
TA office and hours Office, Herring Hall 127, hours, Wednesdays 4-5.
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.
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.
By the end of the course, the student should
A tentative course schedule for 2008 is posted at Schedule 2008. The date a reading (whether textbook or web) appears in the schedule is the date by which the reading is to be done. Assignment and exam dates are also indicated in the course schedule. The Announcements on the Ling/Engl 215 site on Owlspace will be the first place I announce any changes to the schedule.
| Midterm #1 | 20% |
| Midterm #2 | 25% |
| Midterm #3 | 30% |
| 10 Vocab Quizzes | 5% |
| Word Journal | 15% |
| Participation/being in class | 5% |
In addition to assigned readings specified on the Course Schedule, students are responsible for reading the pages in the Course Content Links, from the bordered grid of links on this page below, as these links become activated on the web.
Participation points for the course are based students' questions posed or answered in class; my perception of your presence as the course goes on; and submission vs. non-submission of the sample new words assignment.
Students are responsible for getting an Owlspace account so they can read the Announcements and get any course materials posted there. Course records will be maintained on the Owlspace site and will be made accessible to each student as far as is possible.
The one significant piece of writing in this class is the Word Journal project. The purpose is to get you attuned to the words in the language used around you. One part of the assignment is to help you expand your vocabulary in the specialized subject matters that you are dealing with in your academic subjects. The other part of the assignment is to notice and collect neologisms and figure out how and why they were created; and to describe the various linguistic processes they demonstrate. The vocabulary you are learning in classes is not that different in kind from the neologisms: all technical vocabulary and jargon, for example, were once neologisms, either borrowed from other languages or created out of existing morphemes.
The Word Journal is covered under the Honor Code as well: you have to 'catch' the words in use yourself -- that means you must hear or read them in a real context, and not take them from anyone else's written or online discussion of them as words; and your definitions for the words must be in your own words. See the three links below under Honor Code issues for further explication.
The Word Journal will take a fair amount of time. That is why it is advisable to use the whole semester to collect and write about the words. There is nothing worse than trying to find a whole bunch of words and think of things to write about them in a short period of time. The project will go smoothly if you do a little at a time and keep up with the class so you can use concepts from the course in your observations about the words.
To help ensure that you are at least collecting words during the semester, and hopefully thinking abut them too, we will have a an assignment in which you will submit 5 words, with definitions, that you have collected (no full write-ups necessary); and another due later, in which you will submit another five words, this time with draft writeups.
Your neologisms collected will be entered online into the Neologisms Database I will be telling you more about this as the semester progresses.
Exam coverage
Exams will cover readings, the two DVD episodes, class discussions,
the web materials in the Course Content Links, and any materials
distributed in class. Quizzes (total 10) are based on
sets of morphemes (called "Word Elements" in the textbook). These
are listed at the end of most of the chapters.
Exam and Quiz format
Exams are taken on paper in class (or in another room as arranged).
The questions are primarily multiple choice, T/F, matching, placing in correct
time sequences, fill in the blank, and short answer. There will also
be "parsing", which means dividing a word into its component
morphemes (the form and the meaning) and providing the associated word
definition. Quizzes are all multiple choice.
Exam policies
Any illness or other disaster that keeps a student from taking an
exam during the time period set must be reported to me (kemmer AT
rice.edu) before the exam is due (if you can't notify me, then ask your
parent or college master to do so). There are no make-up exams or
quizzes for non-emergency situations.
Final exam--not
Instead of a final exam, we will have a third midterm on
the last day of class as discussed in class. There will be an
optional additional session for the 3rd midterm in case students
cannot make the 1st one or can fit the second one better into their
work schedule.
Exam reviews
The following lists of relevant terminology will be linked in the weeks
before each exam:
The review pages, when linked above, should give you an idea of what you do or do not know, so look at them and bring any questions you have to class.
Honor code for exams
All exams in the course are pledged, closed book, closed notes,
closed mouths, closed ears (to others talking) and no internet surfing
during exams. The Quizzes are intended as closed book too,
since they are of little value otherwise.
Honor code for Word Journal
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 'in the wild' yourself. Your own
journal entry for the word (all of the writing you submit for these
assignments) should be original to you of course.
The words you submit should not be taken from any collection of new words, on line or in any print materials.
To avoid unclarity about academic standards relating to use of the World Wide Web, these standards are posted on the following links:
Students should consult these before using the web to produce coursework (in this or any course!!)
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.
Grading is done by points. The course has 100 points total. The mean is set at about a B-/B.
The quantity and nature of the material is set with the expectation that if a Rice student (i.e. a student preselected for academic ability) does everything required in the course, spends a few hours a week throughout the semester studying the material and extra hours preparing for the exams, and takes the Word Journal assignment seriously, it should be possible to get at least a B- in the course.
To pass the class, a student needs 50% or more of the total points. This is expected to be well below average performance, but it is acceptable for passing given the amount and nature of the material.
A word to the wise: A fair amount of material in the course is not known to most speakers of English. And unfortunately, most speakers of English believe a good number of myths about the language. It is probably not possible to pass the course relying on "general knowledge", since so much of what passes for general knowledge about English and about language in general is simply false: there are many popular misconceptions about English and about language in our culture, often dating back centuries and spread through the school curriculum.
A large part of the course consists of information that is completely new to most speakers, or at least different from what they thought was the case.
Textbook
Keith Denning and William Leben,
English Vocabulary Elements, New York: Oxford Unversity Press,
2006. (Second edition.) As of 8/27 the textbook
was sold out from the Rice bookstore, but some students
who took the course last year may be willing to sell their
books. Ask on your college mailing list or web bulletin board.
Note that the required version is the
the SECOND EDITION and not the outdated
1995 first edition. You can also get new and used copies on Amazon. It
is not an expensive book.
If you can't get a copy of the book in time for the next reading, borrow a copy
and xerox the first couple chapters. They are not long.
English language dictionaries
Different purposes call for different dictionaries. Nowadays online
dictionaries can be used for definitions. But for etymologies, a
better resource is needed than standard online dictionaries. Many
online dictionaries don't have any etymological information, and
some have very little.
The following print dictionaries can be used for preparing and/or checking your etymologies for the Word Journal assignment; or you can use the OED Online, see below.
The unabridged dictionary referred to in our textbook is the Webster's 3rd New International Dictionary of the English language, unabridged (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam Webster, 2002) which is in Fondren, call number PE1625 .W36 2002 .
The print dictionary I prefer for etymologies is the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. My copy is the 2nd edition which has the Dictionary of Indo-European Roots in the back, as well as an excellent article on the Proto-Indo-European language. The publisher removed those materials in the 3rd edition, but restored them in the 4th edition by popular demand. Fondren has the 4th edition in its stacks, call number PE1628 .A623 2000 .
OED Online: Comprehensive on-line dictionary
Rice has access to an online version of the famous Oxford
English Dictionary Online Second Edition. [The link on this
page has been updated. If it doesn't work, please tell me. --S.K. ]
You have to be using an on-campus computer to access it, or else have
a VPN connection to Rice from off-campus. The OED, both the
unabridged print dictionary and its online version, is the gold
standard of dictionaries. The online edition has recently been
updated to include new words and citations up to about 2000.
Basic on-line dictionary
Merriam-Webster
Online. Quick search capability allow you to get definitions
instantly. However, the etymology information is not detailed enough
for our purposes.
Among online dictionaries, only the Oxford English Dictionary Online linked above gives sufficient information on etymologies to be used as the source for etymologies presented in class. If you don't want to digest all the detail of the etymological information in the OED, use one of the large print dictionaries referred to above.
Additional resources for this course
See Online and Other References.
We will view the first 2 parts of the video series "The Adventure of English: 500-2000 A.D." The host of the series is the British television personality Melvyn Bragg. These 2 DVDs, after we view them, will be available for checkout at the Circulation Desk at Fondren. They are on 2-hour reserve until about Sept. 20. During this period you can check them out overnight after 10 p.m. ; they will be due 10 a.m. the next day. In the week before the first midterm, they will be on 2-hour loan exclusively (no overnight), to accommodate more people wanting to review for the exam.
Only the 2 parts we view in class are required viewing, but the rest of the episodes are enjoyable to watch and may help reinforce the material on the history of English for the exams.
Many of the other web materials for this course have been organized into a public, stand-alone website, available to the world with an organizational logic independent of this course. This site is Words in English public website.
Course pages corresponding to the text and classroom content, plus relevant pages from the above site, will be linked below as we come to them in the course of the semester. You can also surf around on the public site; see the site map for quick navigation.
List of
maps of Britain from various centuries (The most relevant ones are
selected and
linked in the proper order below, with others from elsewhere.)
Map: Germanic tribes arrive in England from the Continent, starting 410 a.d.
Map: Tribal control ca. 550 a.d.
England prior to Viking attacks and before rise of Wessex (700s)
Viking Invasions in Europe (800s and later)
England after rise of Wessex and after partition between Anglo-Saxons and Danes (800s)
The Danes take the whole thing: England under Canute, Scandinavian king (1014-1035)
Dominions of William I, Post-Conquest
The Lord's Prayer in English Through Time
Excerpt: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
View the Whole Bayeux Tapestry
Canterbury Tales, First Page of Prologue
The Canterbury Tales, Digital Facsimile
Caxton, First Printed Book in English
The King James Bible: Source of common phrases in Modern English
William Shakespeare: His Dramatic and Linguistic Legacy
Recent translations of Beowulf and a high budget movie that was released in November 2007 can make this epic come to life for those interested in ancient Germanic stories (ultimately, the same source from which J.R.R. Tolkien created The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy). The movie homepage and other links are on our Resources Page under the heading for Beowulf. The links are optional, but recommended, and in the case of the movie, very cool.
Spelling reformers have gained supporters at various times in English history. George Bernard Shaw was perhaps the most famous, as he left his fortune to an association promoting English spelling reform. This little article is a joke, but it does suggest some of the problems that would arise with spelling reform.
Proto-Indo-European demonstration and exploration website
The Comparative Method and IE Languages
"Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans", by Calvert Watkins. This is the essay that was originally published in the 2nd edition of the American Heritage Dictionary in about 1976--the dictionary I had when I was in high school and which I bring to class when I remember. I read it and was blown away by all of this information, which was completely new to me, and as I found, completely unknown to anyone else around me. It put me on the path to becoming a historical linguist (although I did not become an Indo-Europeanist, but a diachronic typologist, another variety of historical linguist.)
Dictionary of Indo-European roots This dictionary of reconstructed roots of the Proto-Indo-European parent language can be used a) to explore the deeper origins of words whose etymologies are given in the American Heritage Dictionary; these etymologies cite the roots which you can then look up here; and b) to browse through, and thereby explore word families, that is, sets of words that are etymologically related (i.e. descended from the same parent root) although you might never know it from their current forms.
A searchable database for neologisms collected by students in this class was created by Daniel Rasheed in consultation with the instructor, and with participation from other students, in Dec. 2006.
The words collected were entered by the students, each entering his or her own collection. In addition, a number of students input entries (and/or edited and corrected entries, in teamwork coordinated by Daniel Rasheed) from Word Journals from Fall 2004 and from the earlier online Journals cited below.
This prototype database can be accessed at: Neologisms Database.
The new site Rice University Neologisms has been upgraded to include full searchability on all fields, similar to an online dictionary like the Oxford English Dictionary Online. You will enter your neologisms on the site. Collect them in the meantime in a Word file and you can cut and paste later.
Earlier incarnations of class neologism collections:
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.
For a fuller list, see the Online and Other References link. But the following are some of my favorites:
| Word.A.Day | World Wide Words | Word Spy |
| Word Play | Word Detective | Online Etymology Dictionary |
© 2002-2008 Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 23 Nov 08