TEXTBOOK:
Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language (4th ed.; ISBN 015500168X)

COURSE DESCRIPTION.  I can assure you that this course will be one of the most difficult but also one of the best classes you will ever take.  As a user of language, you already know a great deal about English intuitively.  In this course, we are going to learn about the history of our language, and as we do so, we’ll also learn about the nuts and bolts of how languages work and change.  We’ll take a lot of knowledge that you currently possess on an intuitive level and make you more conscious of it.  When you finish the course, you will have a better understanding of why English is the way 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.  Most of the material we will cover in this class is inherently interesting.  Who doesn’t want to know the answers to questions such as

1. How do two people know when their conversation is over?
2. Why do people talk funny to babies?
3. How can anyone seriously propose that English, Hindi, and Persian are all descended from a common language when they’re so different from one another?
4. 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.  NOTE THAT THIS COURSE DOES NOT CARRY ANY GENERAL EDUCATION CREDIT OR MEET ANY GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS.

GOALS.  As my goals for this course, I want you

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 know in basic outline the major events of the history of English,
4. to become familiar with the essentials of phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax,
5. to recognize that variations in language are not necessarily signs of inferiority, and
6. to be able to apply what you learn in this class to real-life situations and everyday language use.

REQUIREMENTS.  For this course, you must complete the following graded assignments:

1. a mid-term exam (260 points),
2. two short papers (240 points each), and
3. a final exam (260 points).

Your final grade will be based on a 1000-point scale:  A = 930-1000, 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.

QUIZZES.  In addition to your graded assignments, I will also periodically give ungraded quizzes.  These quizzes are primarily a diagnostic tool.  They help me see what you as a class are having trouble with, and they help you 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 the exams and papers in this class.  Class exercises and discussion constitute important, useful preparation for the course’s graded assignments.  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.

OFFICE HOURS.  My office is Bliss 216.  My office hours this semester will be 9:30-10:50 a.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays.  If you cannot see me at this time, however, feel free as needed to call my office (771-2106) or talk to me before or after class to arrange an appointment at another time.  You may also contact me by e-mail (gsteinbe@tcnj.edu), or you may leave a message for me in my box at the English department offices in Bliss 124.  E-mail is generally the fastest way to contact me in an emergency.

EMAIL.  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.  To forward mail from your TCNJ address, just go to http://managemail.tcnj.edu/  and click “Mail Forwarding Manager.”  Follow the directions there to set up the mail forwarding.

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 course (ENGL20201) 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 addresses you’ve selected.

COURSE SCHEDULE.  This schedule is subject to revision at the discretion of the professor.

Date	Topic	Assignment
M Jan 20	Introductions	----------
R Jan 23	Language Acquisition	Pyles and Algeo, pp. 1-24
M Jan 27	Conversation	language acquisition exercise
R Jan 30	Phonetics	conversation exercise; literary conversation exercise; Pyles and Algeo, pp. 25-35
M Feb 3	Phonetics	phonetics exercise
R Feb 6	Quiz and Sound Change	phonetics exercise; Pyles and Algeo, pp. 35-41
M Feb 10	Sound Change	phonetics exercise, another phonetics exercise, and sound change exercise
R Feb 13	Sound and Sense	sound change exercise
M Feb 17	Sound and Sense SNOW DAY!  NO CLASS!	sound change exercise.  Click here for an example of a good paper from a previous semester on sound in the poem “Thistles.”
R Feb 20	Indo-European languages and Grimm's Law Quiz and Sound and Sense	sound change exercise and sound change exercise and Pyles and Algeo, pp. 61-94
M Feb 24	Sound and Sense, Indo-European languages, and Grimm's Law	Grimm's Law exercise Pyles and Algeo, pp. 61-94
R Feb 27	Quiz and Inflection	Grimm's Law exercise
M Mar 3	Old English	inflection exercise and other inflection exercises; Pyles and Algeo, pp. 95-133
R Mar 6	Old English	PAPER 1 DUE
M Mar 10	NO CLASS	Spring Break
R Mar 13	NO CLASS	Spring Break
M Mar 17	Old English	Old English exercise
W Mar 19	11:30 a.m.-12:50 p.m.:  Optional Review Session	I will meet with any interested students in our regular classroom.  Bring questions or topics that you would like to review for the mid-term exam.  Click here for a sample mid-term exam.  Click here for a review exercise on sound changes.  Click here for a review exercise on Old English.
R Mar 20	Old English	Old English exercise
M Mar 24	MID-TERM EXAM	Study, study, study
R Mar 27	Lexicon, Semantic Shift, and Derivation	Pyles and Algeo, pp. 237-285
M Mar 31	Middle English	semantic shift and derivation exercises; Pyles and Algeo, pp. 134-164
R Apr 3	Modern English and Great Vowel Shift	Middle English exercise; Pyles and Algeo, pp. 165-181
M Apr 7	Quiz and Borrowing	Great Vowel Shift exercise; Pyles and Algeo, pp. 286-311
R Apr 10	Quiz and Standardization	borrowing exercise; Pyles and Algeo, pp. 182-211
M Apr 14	Syntax	PAPER 2 DUE.
R Apr 17	Quiz, Syntax, and Transformations	syntax exercise
M Apr 21	Syntax and Transformations	transformations exercises.  PAPER 2 DUE.
R Apr 24	Quiz and Dialects	transformations exercise; Pyles and Algeo, pp. 212-236
M Apr 28	Quiz and Registers	dialect exercise
R May 1	Dialects and Registers	registers exercise, dialect and registers exercises
W May 7	11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.:  Optional Review Session	I will meet with any interested students in our regular classroom from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.  Bring questions or topics that you would like to review for the final exam.  Click here for a sample final exam (in Microsoft Word format).
Finals Week	FINAL EXAM	Study, study, study.

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