Instructor: Kathleen Ward, Department of Linguistics, College of Letter and Science
Description: When John McWhorter came to consider the history of the English language, he named his long paper “What happened to English?” In many ways, the history of English is unique, even among related languages. In this seminar, we are going to explore the many factors that had an effect on the English language: its inheritance from Indo-European and proto-Germanic as well as the many social and political factors—invasion, resettlement, and contact—that contributed to the development of English and its current status as family of “world Englishes.”
Format: The seminar will meet for one hour the first week and for two hours a week for the remaining nine weeks. Students in pairs will do weekly projects and exercises designed to make them familiar with the people and factors that contributed to English and with earlier forms of English; they will do different projects and pool their knowledge during class. Readings will be provided but there will be no overall text for the class. Grading: Student will receive a letter grade on the completion of their exercises (50%) and the quality of their participation (50%) in class discussion.
About the Instructor: Kathleen M. Ward has been a lecturer at UC Davis since 1982. She has taught courses introductory linguistics, American language variation, English grammar for teachers, second language acquisition, functional linguistics, eighteenth-century novel, first language acquisition, and composition.