Introduction to the English Language

TEXTBOOKS:

• Anne Curzon and Michael Adams, How English Works, 3rd ed. (Longman, 2012), ISBN 0205032281

COURSE DESCRIPTION.  The official course description for this class is available through PAWS.  Adding to that official description, I can almost guarantee that this course will be one of the most difficult but also one of the best classes that you will ever take.  As a user of language, you already know a great deal about English intuitively.  But in this course, we’re going to take a lot of that knowledge about language that you currently possess on an intuitive level and make you more conscious and deliberate about it.  We’re going to learn about the nuts and bolts of how languages work and change.  When you finish the course, you will have a better understanding of why English is the way that it is (usually because of historical accident or a universal linguistic rule or both), and you will have a store of conversation starters and fun facts to know and tell about your mother tongue.  You’ll also have a greater understanding and appreciation of language that you can take into your literature, journalism, and education classes.  Most of the material we will cover in this class is inherently interesting.  Who doesn’t want to know the answers to such questions as

1. How do two people know when their conversation is over?
2. Why do people talk funny to babies?
3. How do people come up with alternate lyrics to songs that they hear on the radio (e.g., “Might as well face it, you’re a dick with a glove”)?
4. Where and when did language originally develop?
5. Why is English spelling so screwy?

But you will have to work hard to master a large amount of new material in order to be able to answer these questions adequately.  In this course, you will be introduced to a lot of information that will be entirely new to you.  You will need to memorize, digest, and assimilate a great deal as the term goes along.  But I will help you in every way I can, and your classmates will be there with you the whole way.

GOALS.  In terms of my goals for this course, I want you to

1. to develop your appreciation – and respect – for the complexity and beauty of the English language;
2. to become more conscious of what you are actually doing when you use language;
3. to show an understanding of language acquisition and development;
4. to demonstrate how reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and thinking are interrelated;
5. to recognize the impact of cultural, economic, political, and social environments upon language;
6. to show a respect for and understanding of diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles;
7. to show an understanding of the evolution of the English language and the historical influences on its various forms;
8. to demonstrate an understanding of English grammars; and
9. to demonstrate an understanding of semantics, syntax, morphology, and phonology.

REQUIREMENTS.  This course has the following graded assignments:

1. three exams (200 points each for the first two and 300 points for the third) and
2. three short papers (100 points each).

Your final grade will be based on a 1000-point scale:  A = 930-1000 points, A- = 900-929, B+ = 870-899, B = 830-869, B- = 800-829, C+ = 770-799, C = 730-769, C- = 700-729, D+ = 670-699, D = 600-669, and F = below 600.

In addition to your graded assignments, I will also periodically give ungraded quizzes.  These quizzes are primarily a diagnostic tool for both you and me.  They help me to see what you, as a class, are having trouble with, and they help you to see what you still need to study before the exam.  I intend them to be a low-stress experience and therefore do not grade them, but I do collect them and look them over in order to get a sense of what you have learned and what you may still need to learn in order to do well in the class.

ATTENDANCE.  Regular attendance is a virtual necessity for successful completion of this class.  Class activities constitute important, useful preparation for your graded work.  If you miss a class, you will essentially lose out on that day’s contribution to your preparation, since it is never really possible to reproduce or recapture the dynamics and flow of information for a missed class meeting (even if you get notes from someone).  If, however, you positively must miss a class, I expect you to find out what you missed and to come fully prepared – without excuses – to the next class meeting.  And please, don’t ask, “Did I miss anything?”  Check out Tom Wayman’s poem about that question.  For more on the College’s attendance policy, please go to http://www.tcnj.edu/~recreg/policies/attendance.html.

Academic Integrity.  Academic dishonesty is any attempt by a student to gain academic advantage through dishonest means, to submit, as his or her own, work which has not been done by him/her or to give improper aid to another student in the completion of an assignment. Such dishonesty would include, but is not limited to: submitting as his/her own a project, paper, report, test, or speech copied from, partially copied, or paraphrased from the work of another (whether the source is printed, under copyright, or in manuscript form). Credit must be given for words quoted or paraphrased. The rules apply to any academic dishonesty, whether the work is graded or ungraded, group or individual, written or oral.  TCNJ’s academic integrity policy is available on the web at http://www.tcnj.edu/~academic/policy/integrity.html.

OFFICE HOURS and EMAIL.  My office is Bliss Hall 216, and my office hours this term are 2:00-3:20pm on Tuesdays and Fridays.  If you cannot see me during these office hours, feel free as needed to call my office (771-2106) or to talk to me before or after class to arrange an appointment at another time.  You may also contact me by email (gsteinbe@tcnj.edu), or you may leave a message for me in my box at the English department offices in Bliss 124.  Email is generally the fastest way to contact me in an emergency.

I may, on occasion, want to e-mail everyone in class.  I generally only have access to your TCNJ e-mail addresses, however.  As a result, if you regularly use an e-mail address other than your TCNJ address, I recommend that you have mail from your TCNJ address forwarded to the address you use more regularly.  That way, if I e-mail your TCNJ address, my message will be forwarded to your other address automatically.

If you would like to send an e-mail message to one or more of your classmates, you can do so through SOCS.  To access SOCS, go to http://socs.tcnj.edu and, after you have logged in with your TCNJ e-mail username and password, choose this class from the list of your courses this semester.  Then, when our course page comes up, click the “Email” button.  From there, you can select individual e-mail addresses or the entire class and send a message to the address(es) you’ve selected.

Accommodations.  The College of New Jersey prohibits discrimination against any student on the basis of physical or mental disability or perceived disability.  The College will also provide reasonable and appropriate accommodations to enable students with disabilities to participate in the life of the campus community.  Individuals with disabilities are responsible for reporting and supplying documentation verifying their disability, and requests for accommodations must be initiated through the Office of Differing Abilities Services (Eickhoff Hall 159).  If you require special assistance, I will make every reasonable effort to accommodate your needs and to create an environment where your special abilities will be respected.  For more information, please go to http://www.tcnj.edu/~affirm/ada.html.

LANGUAGES ACROSS THE CURRICULUM.  A quarter-unit (one-credit) Languages Across the Curriculum independent study may be added to this course for those students who have intermediate level proficiency in another language and who wish to complement the work in this course by utilizing their foreign language skills. Please visit the LAC website at http://internationalstudies.intrasun.tcnj.edu/grant/lac.html or contact dcompte@tcnj.edu for more information. Students must meet with Dr. Compte to enroll in the LAC independent study right away.

SHORT PAPERS.  You will submit three short papers (2-3 pages each) for this course.  The due dates of the papers are noted in the course schedule below.  Please note that you are to work on and write these papers individually; you may not work together on them.  The assignment for each paper is as follows:

1. Go to the MICASE web site at http://micase.umdl.umich.edu/m/micase/.  Choose a transcript of a conversation (a meeting, interview, advising session, office hours, or other).  Choose a portion of the transcript that seems interesting (about 8-10 turns).  Describe what is happening in that portion with respect to speech acts, the cooperative principle, adjacency pairs, and turn taking.  Provide a copy of the relevant portion of the transcript with your paper as an appendix.
2. Click here.  Click here.
3. Use the Oxford English Dictionary to research the history of a single English word.  Where and when did the word originate?  How did English originally acquire it?  When did it come into English usage?  How has it evolved over time in terms of meaning, spelling, pronunciation, lexical category, and morphology?  Click here to go to the online Oxford English Dictionary.  (HINTS:  You should choose a word that has been a part of the English language for a while – rather than a word borrowed or formed recently.  Think about what you’ve learned about the history of the English language and about where your word and its meanings, spellings, pronunciations, and lexical and morphological changes might fit into that larger history.  Pay attention to dates and compare the dates of changes in your chosen word to the dates of major changes and trends in English as a whole.  While changes in your word’s history may not correspond exactly to overall changes in the language, many changes are likely to correspond more or less closely.  You may also want to review word formation in How English Works, pp. 110-117, and the processes of semantic change in How English Works, pp. 222-228.)

These papers will be evaluated primarily with respect to

• your familiarity with and understanding of the linguistic concepts and terms learned in class,
• the insightfulness of your linguistic analysis (i.e., how interesting and observant you are in your use of the linguistic concepts and terms learned in class), and
• the conciseness with which you express yourself.

In other words, you should use these papers to show me how much you’ve learned about linguistics by conveying as much substantive linguistic information (using correct terminology) as you can in as little space as possible.

COURSE SCHEDULE.  The schedule below is subject to revision at the discretion of the professor.  I recommend that you check this online syllabus regularly over the course of the term.  Changes and updates will be indicated in red after the first week of classes.  Items highlighted in yellow are inactive links that will (silently) be activated later in the semester.

Click here if you want to go to my home page.