(no subject)

So, the bad dream this morning was of a professor who got personally insulting in class because he thought I was bullshitting him when I wrote "causality is a fallacy" in some paper.  I suspect he didn't know what the words meant.

We went up to the N GA Celt Fest Sunday, and I saw a few people I hadn't seen in a while, in particular one young woman I went to high school with. She hasn't been in country much since then. She seemed taller than I remember. Met her fiancee (who fits the same physical type as the guy she was with in high school). Met another friend's mother for the first time.

Saw some great music, and listened to some Lost Boys on CD (silly filkage)

Saw some interesting bumper stickers on the way up there and at the festival, including "Regime Change 2004" and "Pagan American" (a USA flag with a pentacle in place of the star field).  In fact I was given  the latter sticker by a man wearing the tshirt version. He gave me the web address, but it doesn't seem to work. I'll probably have to scan it.

School paper in next post, and then discussion thereof.

English History

Now that my paper's been submitted, I invite comments and bugfixes. The topic was something about the historical development of English. I know you're all excited by the prospect of reading it *g* so if you want a more formatted version let me know.

( v1.0 pasted under cut )

Works Cited:

McCrum, Robert, Cran, William, and MacNeil, Robert. (1986) The Story of
English. New York : Elizabeth Sifton Books (Viking).
Crystal, David. (2003) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. (2nd ed.)
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ipsen, Guido. (2000) Linguistics for Beginners. Kassel, Germany : University of
Kassel. Internet
http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb8/misc/lfb/html/text/startlfbframeset.html
Retrieved 22 July 2004
"History of the English language" (2004)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_Language
Retrieved 23 July 2004
Sources:
Fallows, Deborah. (1995) COMM 380: Language in Social Contexts.
Adelphi, MD: UMUC. Course Guide.
"English language" (2004) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
Retrieved 23 July 2004
"English orthography" (2004)
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/English%20orthography
Retrieved 23 July 2004
"Old English" (2004) http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Old%20English
Retrieved 23 July 2004

Paper Discussion

So, for class I am engaged in discussion of my paper with another student, A. I'm working on answering her first batch of questions. She's in italics.

On the first page of your paper you state that the first languages of the British Isles were used by the Celtic tribes. After being invaded by the Romans and then by the Anglo-Saxon Germanic tribes, the Celtic tribes had adopted some of the languages of their invaders and English was beginning to form. Is this accurate? If not, could you clarify my statement?

That seems accurate. Old English formed from the interactions of the languages of the German tribes and their adoption of the Latin alphabet. The Celtic languages did absorb some words from Latin during the Roman occupation.

1. Could you explain what you mean when you say Old English is fully inflected and had a complex system of at least five cases?

Work in Progress

2. On page 2 you say that the Anglo-Saxon language was originally written in the Norse futark runic alphabet. I am a little unclear of what the Norse futark runic alphabet is. Could you please explain exactly what it is and where it came from?

Sorry, I should've used the more common spelling of futhark, so named for the first six characters (F, U, Th, A, R, K). Specifically the Elder Futhark runic system was used by both the Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) and the Norsemen (who spoke Old Norse) who invaded Britain. One of the significant points of Old English is the switch from Futhark to the Latin alphabet, and the Latin alphabet is credited with the triumph of Old English over Old Norse in the time of the Danelaw, the Danish occupation.

There is a lot of material on the WWW about Futhark, but much of it is concerned with the historical and modern use of the rune script for minor divination in the Asatru magical system ("casting the runes"). Here are a couple links that show the alphabet with as little religious data as I could easily find. Sorry.

• Irminsul AEttir
• Elder Futhark Chart (GIF) (also attached)

3. On page 4 you talk about the Great Vowel Shift and the changes in phonology and morphology. Could you explain what brought about the Great Vowel Shift, in what period of time it occurred, and how it helped to change old English into Middle English?

Work In Progress

Advertising Analysis

( Linguisitic analysis of some print ads (since we don't have TV) )