Vorlesung History of the English Language

This lecture course presents a concise survey of the history of the English language since its origins in the Indo-European language family. It serves as an introduction to students who have no previous knowledge of the topic and offers background knowledge to those who are taking, have taken, or plan to take introductory courses to Old of Middle English as well as the course on Language Change. The lecture offers the possibility of earning graded credits, but it can also be taken by students who do not wish to (or need to) obtain credits. Requirements for credits are (a) regular attendance and (b) presentation of a term paper. Since the general requirement for modularized students is to take a 2-hour course (1 hour lecture course plus 1 hour Übung), the third requirement for earning credits is the following: (c) attendance of (at least) seven of the two-hour classes of the seminar Language Change (Monday 10-12, DAK-Gebäude Untere-König-Str. 86, Seminarraum), documented by informal lecture notes to be handed in at the end of the semester. To register for this class, see: Ang 065: Übung -History of the English Language”. For graded credits students will write a term paper. Leture n otes with surveys and summaries of the verious topics dealt with in this lecture with diagrams, a bibliography (see also the library reserve shelf) , and citations from relevant sources on the history of English will be made available via Moddle. Recommended textbook: Barber, Charles. 2002. The English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See also: Library Reserve Shelf FB 02 Institut für Anglistik / Amerikanistik Uni Kassel WiSe 2010/11 Anglistik/Englisch Lehrveranstaltungspool FB 02 Prof. i.R. Nöth Winfried i.R