Words in English public website
Ling/Engl 215
course information
Rice University
Prof. S. Kemmer
Course Recap
Fall 2013
Here is a recap on the course objectives from the Course Information page:
Course objectives: By the end of the course, the student should
Over the course of the semester from class to class and from exam to
exam, my aim was to help you acquire and improve some of the following
abilities.
Capabilities to Develop:
- Ability to recognize morphemes in words despite their
occurrence in somewhat different forms (allomorphs)
- Increased parsing ability
- Increased understanding of word formation processes, particularly
for new words
- Increased ability to judge the likeliest source language
for a given word, based on knowledge of characteristics
of loanwords from different languages
- Ability to recognize and produce examples of
words illustrating sound processes, like assimilation,
rhotacism, various kinds of deletion and weakening, etc.
- ability to recognize and produce examples of
various types of semantic change
- ability to discuss the cognitive processes underlying
semantic change, particularly metaphor and metonymy
- knowledge of some specific word histories
- knowledge of how linguistic relationship is established (via the
comparative method) and ability to recognize the major languages and
language subfamilies of the large family containing English, the
Indo-European language family
- ability to describe some of what we know about the Proto-Indo-Europeans
- some conception of the more distant linguistic relationships found
in the world, and where the Indo-European family fits into the global
linguistic picture
- awareness of the ubiquity of language variation and the kinds and
range of variation and language varieties found in English, including
geographical varieties (dialects), writing vs. speech, standard
vs. non-standard, slang vs. jargon etc.
- an understanding of the uses of variation and linguistic variants
in speech communities to build group solidarity and/or exclude others
from the group
- an appreciation of the creativity of speakers in producing new
lexical units
- ability to understand and describe the major types of word formation
processes found not only in established words, but in neologisms
- an understanding of the reasons speakers produce neologisms, and
how the English language facilitates their creation
If you managed to develop to any degree most or all of these skills
and realms of knowledge, then I feel I have succeeded!
After leaving this course, I hope you take with you not only this knowledge and
these abilities, but also a greatly increased appreciation and respect
for the vast and rich English language and all its verbal treasures.
Last modified 4 Dec 13