Discussion: The Internet
Group Exercise: English Basics
Using what you already know about the grammar, sounds, vocabulary, and history of English, write a brief entry on the English language for a general encyclopedia. Include a bibliography.
Individual Exercise: Animal and Human Communication
Book historians recognize two major forms of printing before the nineteenth century: xylography, or woodcut printing, and typography, or printing with movable type. In xylography, printers carved all the letters for an entire page on a woodblock, applied ink to the block, and then used the block to print pages. In typography, developed in Europe by Johann Gutenberg, printers arranged individual blocks, each containing the impression of a letter or punctuation mark, to spell out words and sentences; they then applied ink to the blocks and pressed paper against them. When they had made the required number of copies of this page, they disassembled the words and sentences and rearranged them for the next page. How are these two forms of printing similar to animal communication and human language? Try to think of other analogies that help illustrate the differences between these two types of communication.
Individual Exercise: Linguistic Analysis
Read the following passage and analyze it from the standpoint of a linguist. What is distinctive about the morphology, phonology, and syntax? Do you see any examples of semantic ambiguity? What sociolinguistic phenomena does the passage illustrate?
MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. That's the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But he had to have it; Tom said he'd got to; there warn't no case of a state prisoner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.
"Look at Lady Jane Grey,'' he says; "look at Gilford Dudley; look at old Northumberland! Why, Huck, s'pose it is considerble trouble?--what you going to do?--how you going to get around it? Jim's got to do his inscription and coat of arms. They all do.''
"Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arm; I hain't got nuffn but dish yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat.''
"Oh, you don't understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different.''
"Well,'' I says, "Jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat of arms, because he hain't.''
"I reckon I knowed that,'' Tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he goes out of this--because he's going out right, and there ain't going to be no flaws in his record.''
(Text courtesy of University of Toronto English Library)
Group Exercise: Consonants and Vowels
Look over "Table 6.6: Phonetic Symbol/English Spelling Correspondences" on pages 244-245 of An Introduction to Language. Note any differences between the pronunciations indicated in the table and your own pronunciation of these words. Are there more differences among the consonants or the vowels? Why do you suppose this is so?
Group Exercise: Phonemes
Complete exercise 6 on page 308 of An Introduction to Language.
Individual Exercise: Phonology and Spelling
Use your understanding of phonology to analyze and correct the common spelling problem in the following sentence: "Many scientist have studied this phenomenon."
Discussion: Sound Symbolism
Review David Crystal's list of "Sounds and Senses" on page 251 of The Cambrdige Encylopedia of the English Language. Why do you think these sounds have the associations they seem to have? Try to think of other sounds with apparent connotations.
Review David Crystal's comments on "A Really Interesting High Rise Intonation" (p. 249) in The Cambrdige Encylopedia of the English Language. Have you noticed this phenomenon in hearing various people speak? If so, how did you interpret it? Do you use this rising intonation? If not, would you consider starting? Why or why not?
Pairs Exercise: Accent
Take turns saying the list of words below. As one person says the words, the other should transcribe the words in IPA. Feel free to ask your partner to repeat the words if necessary. Does your pronunciation of a word change if you use it in a sentence?
Class Exercise: Accent
Listen to the tape of a woman speaking and singing. Try to identify the woman's race and place of birth. How did you reach your decision?
Pairs Exercise: Register
This time, each of you will pronounce the following sentence: "I'm going to say something to them." First, pronounce the sentence as if you were talking to a friend over lunch. Next, pronounce the sentence as if you were speaking to a potential employer in a job interview. Transcribe your partner's speech for each context and note any differences you find.
Individual Exercise: Sound in Poetry
Use what you have learned about stops, continuants, stress, rhyme, and sound symbolism to analyze the following poem by Emily Dickinson:
Now use what you have learned about intonation to read it aloud. You may want to refer to David Crystal's discussion of intonation on pages 248 and 249 of The Encyclopedia of the English Language. Try reading some lines with different intonation and analyze the different effects.
Individual Exercise: E-mail and the World Wide Web
Look up a word or expression in the Dictionary of American Regional English. Summarize and analyze its pronunciation, meaning, and use.
Individual Exercise: Morphological Analysis
Group Exercise: Lexical Innovations
Using your dictionaries, as well as your own knowledge of morphology, analyze the following sentences: "They are conversating about the test." "This method is uneffective." "She acts like a pre-Madonna." "The fort was succumbed by the army's attack." "Opponents to the law are literally coming out of the woodwork." "Many people are surprised by the enormity of the Oxford English Dictionary." "Despite their tortuous ordeal, survivors of the plane crash were in good spirits." "That lamp is very unique." "Copycat crime is a fascinating phenomena." "I borrowed my friends books." "Our program offers the most complete news coverage." You may want to break down some words into their morphemes. Although some of these words do not appear in most standard dictionaries, you probably know what the writer intended them to mean. How do you know?
Individual Exercise: Language Change
Since the time of Jonathan Swift, who said he saw "no absolute necessity why any language should be perpetually changing," prescriptive grammarians have tried to slow down or stop language change. Using what you have learned about coinage, inflectional endings, and phonological phenomena, as well as your experience as a speaker and reader of English, to make a case for or against language change.
Group Exercise: Word Coinage
Discussion: Lexicon in Dialects and Idiolects
Reflecting on your work with the Dictionary of American Regional English and The Origins and Development of the English Language, as well as your own experience hearing and using words, make a list of words that serve as shibboleths--terms that reveal information about a person's native region or social class. In particular, consider lexical differences in British and American dialects and orthography. Also, note any expressions that are peculiar to your family's speech or even your own speech. How do you think these lexical aspects of a dialect spread?
Look up one of the words in the list below in The Oxford English Dictionary and at least one other hardback dictionary, such as The American Heritage College Dictionary. In addition to summarizing the information you find about the word's pronunciation, part of speech, meaning, and history, comment on any striking morphological, lexical, or semantic phenomena that it demonstrates. Finally, note any important differences between the treatments of the words in the different dictionaries. Submit your response to the online forum.
Group Exercise: Patterns of Clauses
Write and diagram an original sentence for each of the clause patterns David Crystal describes on page 221 of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.
Individual Exercise: Transformations
Use a phrase structure tree to diagram the following sentence: "The manager ordered the supplies." Next, perform each of the following transformations:
Individual Exercise: Syntactic Ambiguity
A syntactically ambiguous sentence has one surface structure and two deep structures. Below is a list of newspaper headlines. Using phrase structure trees, show how each illustrates syntactic ambiguity.
Individual Exercise: Paraphrase
Paraphrases are two or more surface structures for the same deep structure. Use a phrase structure tree to diagram each of the following sentences and then paraphrase each. Identify the transformation you used to produce the paraphrase.
Try to think of other ways of paraphrasing these sentences.
Discussion: Rhetorical Grammar
Review the paraphrases you produced in the preceding exercise. In what way can transformations subtly affect the meaning of a deep structure while maintaining the basic message?
Group Exercise: Disjuncts
On page 229 of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, David Crystal points out that disjuncts can contribute to a writer's or speaker's tone. Analyze the role of the disjuncts in the following sentences:
Group Exercise: Language Creation
Using what you have learned about phonology, morphology, and syntax, begin creating an original language. Make a list of vocabulary words, along with some of their inflectional affixes, and write a sentence using these words. Finally, explain the rules governing sound, word formation, and word order.
Group Exercise: Sentence Variety
Write one of the following sentences at the top of a sheet of paper:
First, use a phrase structure tree to diagram each sentence. If necessary, "untransform" the sentence before diagramming it. Then, work together to write at least five new sentences that convey roughly the same information. Comment on the flexibility of English syntax.
Group Exercise: Poetic Syntax
Perhaps the main reason that poetry is so challenging, especially for the inexperienced reader, is that poets generally have a large syntactic vocabulary; that is, they use vocatives, inversions, and other structures more often than other writers. Use what you have learned about syntax to analyze the following lines from poetry:
Group Exercise: Sentence Problems
Use what you know about syntax to analyze the following phrases and suggest ways to turn them into appropriate sentences:
Group Exercise: What's in a Quotation?
As David Crystal notes on page 214 of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, spoken syntax differs from written syntax. No one appreciates this difference more than print journalists, who often have to transcribe spoken sentences for their stories. For this exercise, pretend that you are a reporter who has recorded the following from an interview:
After analyzing this passage, do the following:
Group Exercise: What Words Mean
Use several different methods to try to determine the meaning of the following words. First, use semantic features. Next, write a definition with a hypernym and distinctive attributes. Finally, come up with a list of synonyms. Which method seems most effective? What drawbacks does each have? Referring to Crystal's discussion of synonyms, categorize your list of synonyms according to levels of formality, collocation, and connotation.
Individual Exercise: Semantic Analysis
Each of the following sentences or scenarios, many of which I have drawn from real life, demonstrates at least one semantic phenomenon covered in the reading for this week. Use what you have learned about proper nouns, polysemous nouns, deixis, and other concepts to analyze the item:
Group Exercise: Words on Semantics
Rewrite each of the following quotations using semantic terminology:
Group Exercise: The Meaning of Truth
Discussion: "Politics and the English Language"
Using what you have learned about phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, analyze a sample of political or bureaucratic speech. Here are some things you may want to consider:
Try to refer to terms and concepts we have studied, as well as any books--the OED and books by Crystal and Orwell, for example--that can illuminate your analysis. A number of speeches are available on the World Wide Web. For a recent presidential speech, for example, visit the White House's site. For older speeches and documents, visit the University of Virginia Library electronic text center or a similar site.
Discussion: Brain Physiology and Language
Individual Exercise: Language Processing
Individual Exercise: Check the Grammar Checker
Group Discussions: Language Acquisition
Discussion: Reading and Writing
Discussion: "Primary Culprit"
Individual Exercise: Linguistic Fingerprints
Read these passages and answer the following questions:
In this two-part journal, you will teach a concept in sociolinguistics to your classmates. First, choose one of the terms at the right, write a definition of it in your own words, illustrate the concept with one or more examples that you have found outside our textbook, compile a list of at least two sources related to the concept, and submit this summary to the Online forum. In the second half of the assignment, you will present the concept to the rest of the class and lead us through an exercise on it.
Group Exercise: Sociolinguistic Phenomena
Translate the Gettysburg Address into one of the following:
Group Exercises: Sociolinguistic Phenomena
Group Exercise: Standard English
© Mark Canada, 1998