Exam questions in THE DEVELOPMENT OF STANDARD ENGLISH
June session 2008
1. Old English borrowings
2. The hundred years’ war
3. Middle English verbs
4. Spread of English
5. Language planning goals
6. The inventory of old English sounds
7. Grammatical differences between American Eng. and Brit. Eng.
8. Lexical elaboration in modern English
9. What is literacy?
10. What are the grounds for recognizing three different periods in development of English?
The exam questions in other sessions
1. Selection of the code in Middle English
2. What grounds are there for recognizing three different periods in the history of English: Old English, Middle English and Modern English?
3. How does English compare with other languages you know in respect of the relation that holds between spelling and pronunciation?
4. Linguists and others talk freely about British English, American English, and Australian, English, etc. Are they talking about relatively homogeneous dialects of the same language? What are British, American and Australian English?
5. What’s the role of outside historical forces in the development of Standard English?
6. British vs. American English: Differences on the phonological level/grammatical/phonological level?
7. What was the main language planning goal in the Modern English period?
8. Discuss the verb system in the Middle English Period.
9. When was finally stabilized the use of a single negative form in English?
10. Old English nouns.
11. Old English verb system.
12. The origins of English?
13. When and why was English restablished?
14. The beginnings of the prescriptive grammars.
15. What are the causes of vast borrowings in English?
16. The loss of grammatical gender.
17. Old English pronouns.
18. The inventory of Old English sound system.
19. The 'Great Vowel Shift'.
20. What are the consequences of the language contact of English with Latin, Norse and French?
21. The word order in Old English
22. The vowel shift.
23. Middle English verb system
24. The sociolinguistic impact of the Norman.
25. The role of the Bible in the development of Standard English.
26. The regional varieties of English in the Middle English period.
27. The spread of English.
28. Grammatical differences between British and American English.
29. The rise of prescriptive grammars.
30. The post modifying genitive in Middle English.
Some useful links:
1. http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/cpercy?MENounMorphology
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English
3.http://utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/iedocctr/ie-gram/
4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_morphology
5.http://www.uni-essen.de/SHE/HE_Vocabulary_French.
6.http://lonestar.texas.net/ jebbo/team_as/nouns