Study Guide for The First Test
Recommendations:
- Make sure that you know all the important terminology for phonology (the
ways that sounds are produced) and morphology (grammatical cases and their
functions). You should be able to give a definition for each terminology in
five seconds or so. If you have to think about it longer than that, you
probably haven’t got it memorised. Also, know the IPA symbols for each of
the sounds of English. These are skills we will be using throughout the
course, and I will assume that you’ll know them from here on.
- Recall that language should be looked at using observational, descriptive,
and explanatory criteria. First, find what it striking about the language,
then describe it, and then explain how it came to be. To find what is
striking about a sample of the language, scan it for things like graphology
(letter shapes), orthography (spellings), phonological features (as
indicated by the written forms), inflectional forms, word order, and
vocabulary. You won’t be able to do all of these for the first test, and,
for a given text you may not find something significant in all categories,
but you should practice looking.
- For the first test you will concentrate mainly on graphology, orthography,
phonology, and inflections. You should know:
- The distinctive Old English letter forms.
- The pronunciation of Old English words.
- The major morphological features of Old English (the difference between
strong and weak nouns, the difference between strong and weak verbs, the
functions of each case, the forms of the personal pronoun).
Context:
- You should also know the major historical contexts for the early period:
- The Indo-European background of English and its relationship with the
other Indo-European languages.
- The differences between the Germanic languages and the other
Indo-European languages (the Germanic Accent Shift, Grimm’s Law, etc.)
- How English came to Britain.
- The early history of the Anglo-Saxons and its implications for the
language.