G301, 10/26/99

Class Notes by Moronda Owsley

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19th Century English Factors Influence Popular English

-population increase

-spread of English world-wide

-bilingualism increase

-literacy spreads

-education spreads (moral&content)

-rise of standardization

 -selection, codification, elaboration, implementation

-English attitudes are important

-communication and technology increases

-democracy grows

-commercialism

Two Purposes of Citation

1)     Let people find your exact sources

2)     Enhance credibility

Eight American English Inflections

1)     Plural

2)     Past Tense

3)     Possessive

4)     Third Person Singular

5)     Past Participle (ed)

6)     Present Participles (ing)

7)     –ER, create adjectives

8)     –EST, affixes

*Declension-whole set of forms for a word

*Inflection-stick on ends of words

Linguistic effects of Colonization (Key Terms)

1)     substrate-evidence of other language

2)     dialect-leveling, smoothing differences

3)     focusing-standardization

4)     internal differentiation-variation in colony

 

“It is the business of Americans to select the wisdom of all nations, as the basis of

Constitutions—to avoid their errours—to prevent the introduction of foreign vices and corrections and check the career of her own—to promote virtue and patriotism—to embellish and improve the science—to diffuse an uniformity and purity of language,--to add superior dignity to this infant Empire and to human nature”  (Webster, Grammatical Institute, pt.1, pg.15).

 

*DARE-regional American, etymology, definition, distribution

*OED-etymology, citation (earliest use) may not have regional information is such details

 

Group One

India  The Kashmir Times

-Consistently long, hard-to-understand sentences

Spelling

 -demoralised

 -centre                        s/z            

 -modernisation           re/er

 -challenges

 -souvenier

Word Order

P1-today said

P2-have been imparted training?                     -Vocabulary

    -take on to…                                               -idiom

P12-incomplete sentences

The work order was consistently different than we would use today.  Many sentences were incomplete in paragraphs 11&12.

 

Group Two

Vocabulary:

1.     Settle:  stove top

2.     “I conjectured” :  “I thought.”

3.     Adjuration: andappeal

Grammar:

1.     “Have you no place you call a parlour?”

2.     “They’s Masters …”

3.     “My supper by this time was cold.”

 

Group Three

Text shows evidence of British Colonization:

-Spelling variation (from standard American English)

 -ex:   “compromised” vs. compromized

 -ex:   “trivialized”       vs. trivialized

-Variations in verb forms

 -ex:   “when all else had failed”  vs.  has failed

 -ex:   “plus-que parfait                vs.   past participle

Text shows evidence of non-native English-Nigerians struggle with English (or ideas):

-ex:   “of recent”                vs.  recently

-ex:  “comes well behind” vs.  follow

-ex:  “not far to seek”        vs.  easy to see

 

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