978-0205032280 Chapter 14 Lecture Note & Exercise Part I

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CHAPTER 14

History of English: Modern and Future English

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

It would have been superfluous to catalogue all the features of Modern

English in this chapter: the rest of the book is about the forms and

functions of Modern English, with frequent commentary on its history and

usage interspersed. Here we try to fill in some gaps: first, by discussing

the social motivations of development and change in American English

since 1776; and second, by identifying those features (phonological,

morphological, syntactic, and discourse) peculiar to the period. It is meant

as an opportunity to synthesize the whole course at its end.

The chapter’s second emphasis, the future of English, is of course

primarily a matter of speculation. We imagine that you will want to spend

some time considering World Englishes, which integrates well with

Chapters 2, 10, 11, and 12. You and your students will undoubtedly enjoy

a discussion of the Internet’s ongoing influence on the language, though

we hope that you will also consider the political future of English in the

United States—both are controversial issues, and both are areas in which

informed speakers of English and American citizens can bring their

knowledge to use in the world beyond classrooms and textbooks.

By the time you use this book with students, there will already have been

future English for which we can’t account! Technically, what you know

about, even if we couldn’t anticipate it, isn’t the future. But the point is

this: development and change are ongoing, debates over usage will not be

resolved, and having studied English with this book as a companion,

students should be able to observe, study, evaluate, and, yes, participate in

that change from a position of understanding and authority.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:

• Identify primary social and political influences on change in Modern

English.

• Identify significant developments in Modern English phonology,

morphology, syntax, and vocabulary.

• Participate in informed debate about the status of English as an official

or national language in the United States.

• Describe the status of English as a global language.

• Speculate intelligently about the role of the Internet and other forms of

automated communication in the future of English at all linguistic

levels, from phonology to discourse, and in different registers.

NEW VOCABULARY TERMS

emoticon

grammaticalization

interposing

lingua franca

retronymy

WHERE STUDENTS ARE

• Students who have been working hard to master the technical material

throughout the term will find this a relatively easy chapter to handle.

There’s relatively little new technical material here—extensions of

earlier material and argument make up much of the chapter. What is

new is well within student experience and you will find they will have

plenty to say about that, given the opportunity.

• Few students are well informed about current political affairs, and

many may not know that some states have “English Only” or “Official

English” laws. Conversely, some students may believe that English is

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an officially sanctioned national language. Once they realize what the

facts and issues are, however, they are quick to engage with them.

IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES

This chapter’s material is very conducive to debate, whether structured

formally or as a discussion, especially with regard to the status of English

in the United States (“Should English be the official language of the

United States?”), authority over English as a global language, the power of

the Internet to drive language change in particular directions, and whether

its influence is “good” or “bad.” The book’s previous chapters provide

students with enough historical context to ensure thoughtful approaches to

all of these subjects.

Media Influence

Ask students to collect examples of innovative word forms or grammatical

structures in advertising and then discuss these in class. Students can also

bring in newspaper headlines that exemplify compression. (See Exercise

14.1.)

Internet Influence

Students are an excellent source of information about the ways in which

Internet/IM language is infiltrating their speech and writing in other

contexts. Ask them to collect examples of new acronyms or alphabetisms

that they hear spoken or that they have seen in non-Web/IM-related

written contexts.

INTEGRATING THE HOMEWORK

Homework Progression

Any or all of the exercises can be assigned in any sequence. Instructors

and students alike usually rush through the final chapter on any syllabus:

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the important thing is that students leave the course with a question that

only future experience can answer.

In-Class Activities Based on Homework

Any of the exercises, if assigned as homework first, can frame subsequent

class discussion. Even 14.2 can be useful in this regard: once students

have completed it, the class can discuss the future of punctuation, given

new media with which they may be more familiar than you.

Exercise 14.3, #1 usefully draws on material from Chapter 8 and asks

students to consider how the medium of Instant Messenger alters

conversational structure. Exercise 14.3, #2 helps students see that IM is far

from chaos. It can work well to ask students to bring their ten IM etiquette

rules to class and then compile a class list of etiquette rules together;

students are surprised by how many rules they share, as well as how many

they know but forgot to write down themselves.

Exercise 14.3, #4 can be an effective way for students to learn more about

a minority language that interests them. Exercise 14.4 is designed to

prompt vigorous classroom debate.

EXTRA RESOURCES

As we wrote in the chapter overview, the extra resources for the future are

all around you, and your students often bring knowledge of these

resources to class. As for the development of Modern English, the

suggested reading at the end of each chapter, and the bibliography

included at the end of the book, indicate many resources instructors will

find useful in preparing and supplementing material in How English

Works. We have provided a few more resources below.

Students can hear different varieties of World English at Evaluating

English Accents Worldwide: http://www.otago.ac.nz/anthropology/

Linguistic/Accents.html.

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Students can hear different accents of English from speakers with different

language backgrounds at The Speech Accent Archive: http://classweb.

gmu.edu/accent/.

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ANSWER KEY

Chapter 1: A Language Like English

EXERCISE 1.4

1. The pronunciation of nuclear as “noo-kyuh-luhr” is arguably a case of

2. Analogy is likely the cause of the “new” pronunciation “heighth,”

although this pronunciation has a long history in English. The word we

3. In English spelling, <ut> is almost always pronounced to rhyme with

4. The word mouse used to refer to the computer clicker is an example of

mice; it scurries about the mousepad; and it has a tail (the cord).

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5. Taboo meanings of a word can make other meanings of the word

6. The phrase a nædre was eventually reanalyzed as an adder. If you say

7. It appears that the word another, originating from an + other, has been

8. Given its original meaning of a point that was open to debate or

9. Because moot is not a familiar word for many speakers of English,

10. The process of creating a new verb such as burgle from an existing

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11. Due to France’s unwillingness to support the United States’ war in

12. Syllabi represents the Latin plural form of syllabus, which is a Latin

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Chapter 3: English Phonology

EXERCISE 3.1: TRANSCRIPTION OF ENGLISH WORDS

1. Rewrite the following sentences into standard spelling.

a. Once upon a time there was a cat in a hat who escaped from the world

2. Identify each of the following works of fiction.

a. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

b. A Tale of Two Cities

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3. Provide phonemic transcriptions for the following words.

a. One-syllable words

/tɪk/ /kɑɪt/ /pæt/

/ki/ /mæn/ /tin/

b. Two-syllable words

/tælɛnt/ /dʒɛloʊ/ or /dʒɛlo/

/wɪndoʊ/ or /wɪndo/ /swɛtər/ or /swɛtr ֽ ◌ /

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/tuzdeɪ/ or /tjuzdeɪ/ /hʌsəl/ or /hʌsl ֽ ◌ /

/propoz/ or /prəpoʊz/ /sæmwɪtʃ/ or /sændwɪtʃ/

c. Longer multisyllabic words

/jɛstərdeɪ/ or /jɛstr ֽ ◌ deɪ/ /sɛrəmoʊni/ or /sɛrəmoni/

/kælɪbreɪt/ or /kæləbreɪt/ /rɛvoluʃən/ or /rɛvoluʃn ֽ ◌ /

EXERCISE 3.2: NATURAL CLASSES

a. high vowels

EXERCISE 3.3: PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES

1. The allophone [ŋ] appears before the velar consonants /k, g/, and the

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assimilation: the nasal becomes velar before another velar consonant.

The rule can be written as follows:

/n/ ! [ŋ] / __ [+velar].

In the history of English, when the final /g/ was eventually lost, many

words retained the velar nasal.

2. For all three fricatives, the voiced allophone [v, z, ð] appears between

voiced sounds, and the voiceless allophone [f, s, θ] appears elsewhere.

3. Minimal pairs that demonstrate particular distinctive features:

EXERCISE 3.4: PHONOLOGICAL RULES

1. This is a case of insertion. The /p/, which is bilabial and voiceless,

2. The deletion is probably the result of having two /r/s in such close

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3. Here are the words transcribed:

/tɪkt/

Assume that the basic past tense ending is /d/. Then the three rules,

ordered most efficiently, are as follows:

• If the verb ends in an alveolar stop (/t, d/), insert a vowel to create

4. Here are the words transcribed:

/triz/

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Assume the basic plural ending is /z/. Then the three rules, ordered

most efficiently, are as follows:

• If the noun ends with a sibilant, insert a vowel to create the ending

EXERCISE 3.5: PHONOTACTIC CONSTRAINTS

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Chapter 4: English Morphology

EXERCISE 4.1: INFLECTIONAL VS. DERIVATIONAL ENDINGS

You may have noticed I that some English speakers I intone

their declarative sentences I as though they were questions, so that “I

EXERCISE 4.2: MORPHOLOGY TREES

1. For reformer, the tree needs to reflect that reform is the root verb, with

2. Develop morphology trees for the following words.

ADV

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ADJ N

V ADJ

ADJ N

ADV N

1 The word retrovirus can also be interpreted as one word, an alteration of retravirus.

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N

3. Create two morphology trees to demonstrate the ambiguity of

undoable.

EXERCISE 4.4: BORROWINGS

Here are the borrowed forms (in the order they appear in the paragraph)

that need to be replaced:

incorporate

return

action

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argue

term

imply

question

exist

course

argument

apply

simply

polite

imagine

community

EXERCISE 4.5: WORDS OF THE YEAR

Word

Word–Formation Process

Bailout

compounding

recombobulation area

back–formation, affixation, compounding

moofing

acronymy, affixation

subprime

affixation

green–

functional shifting

googlegänger

combining form (–gänger)

to pluto/be plutoed

functional shifting

climate canary

compounding

waterboarding

compounding (and affixation)

truthiness

affixation

podcast

blending

whale–tail

compounding

crotchfruit

compounding

Sudoku

borrowing

red/blue/purple states

compounding

phish

respelling

badly sourced

compounding and affixation

stalkette

affixation

metrosexual

blending

flexitarian

blending

freegan

blending

SARS

acronymy

WMD

alphabetism

google

coining

dataveillance

blending

Iraqnophobia

blending

dialarhoea

blending

Saddameter

blending or affixation

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Chapter 5: English Syntax: The Grammar of Words

EXERCISE 5.1 : NOUNS

1. Many of these nouns can be both countable and uncountable, especially

in particular contexts.

water Usually uncountable, but countable in reference to

bottles of water (e.g., “I’ll pick up a couple of waters”).