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I just found an interesting article by Ronald Butters.  Here’s the introduction to his article:
“The vast literature on reasons why human languages inevitably change through time focuses on two types of causation, “functional,” and “social.”  My purpose here is to explore a third category of explanation, one that has largely been ignored or dismissed as [...]

Okay, so I’m pretty sure that I want to write about the impact of “political correctness” and maybe compare its status to other forms of prescriptivism.  I also wanted to talk about its impact on lexicography and resulting neologisms, such as “African American” and “disabled” as well as discussing the evolution of “culturally sensitive” vocabulary.  For instance, “crippled” [...]

Anyone familiar with LOLcats should know what I’m about to say… So here goes.
I’m tossing around an essay topic that has to do with the (non-)English of LOLcats, of “I can has cheezburger?” and “Im in ur fridge, eatin ur foodz” fame. For the unfamiliar, Wikipedia has a good general introduction, or you [...]

While looking for sources on my topic, the BBC English, I can across this article (copied below). Beyond just an interesting history of the letter “yogh,” it is an example of the effects of standardization from the printing press. While the printing press was helpful to spread the written language, it seems to [...]

So, I’ve been thinking about my topic for the essay- came across this notion of “Jewish English.”  I think I might narrow my topic down to certain expressions that have been borrowed from Yiddish, how / why, but I’m still checking out this Jewish English for fun- if you get the chance and feel like [...]

http://www.britishcouncil.org/ba/learning-elt-future.pdf    
As  I was browsing around looking for ideas for my paper, I stumbled across this article forecasting the popularity and future of the English language in the 21st century. It’s relatively old, published maybe 11 years ago by the British Council but it brings up interesting points that are still relevant today. One of the [...]

So I did some follow-up research regarding my question in class Thursday about Latin pronouns. Nowhere on the Web, from university websites all the way to Wikipedia, did I find any mention of a formal/informal distinction between the Latin second-person pronouns.
On a closer look, I found this: Crystal mentions on 307 that the development [...]

I decided I’d take Professor’s advice and throw my intended topic up on the blog. I had originally thought I wanted to do something on leveling and the possibility of a pidgin in the Danelaw, but that seems like it would be too difficult given that modern, cutting edge scholars of Old English still don’t [...]

http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php#top
Robotic, but delivers what it promises.

There is a tendency to be cowed by the Great Vowel Shift. I know I am. This website developed by Melinda Menzer of Furman University explains it all. We’ll have a close look in class on Tues 25 March.