Welcome to HEL

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.

ENG 85 11 March 2008
Today: Freeborn 14, Early Modern English of the C15: Margery Kempe and the Paston Letters.
Next time: Caxton’s Prefaces to Eneydos, and to Malory’s Morte Arthure; Review of the exam, and looking ahead at an updated schedule.

Item: ðæra treowa

In the bit of text from the OE Genesis Eve states that “Of ðæra treowa wæstme ðe synd on Paradisum we etað” – we do eat the fruit of the trees that are in Paradise. Ellie noticed that you can’t make “treowe” (as I mistranscribed) work if this is gen. pl. masc (which it is). Kudos to Ellie for pointing this out. Furthermore “wæstme” is dat. sg., so it is not even in apposition with “ðæra treowa” and therefore should not have been included in the question. So that question will be a gimme for the exam, and any errors in translating that bit of the text will not be deducted from the score. I may have thought the whole thing was dative. It was late, I was tired, and I tried to get cute. Apologies to all.

Item: We hulpon þæt fægre wif

Liz noticed something very interesting about that sentence that made me rethink it altogether.
‘We hulpon þæt fægre wif’ is correct if fægre is read as neut. accus. sg weak adjective. Wif is indeed neuter, and the weak ending for accus. sg. is -e.
However, something I forgot at the time of making the exam: helpan always takes the genitive. So the sentence should be:
‘We hulpon þæs fægran wifes” – We helped that fair woman (neut. sg. gen.)
As I said, that question about ‘fægre’ will be a gimme for the exam. My confidence in your abilities to learn the HEL even in spite of your professor waxes ever greater.

Sound Comparisons

I found this site while looking for some guides to the IPA online while studying. It is a guide to the “accents of English from around the world.” On the site, you can choose a word from the Standard English, like “daughter,” and see it transcribed in IPA and (for most) hear it out loud in a multitude of dialects. The words are grouped by time and region, like Old English or Modern North Carolina.

It is very useful to see changes in the words over time and space. Also, it is helpful to see and hear the IPA.

As an aside, I also came across this amusing and pretty amazing video on youtube. A woman does 21 modern English accents in just under 3 minutes.

21 Accents Video (Youtube)

On Vowels

The OE vowel chart in Freeborn only maps 7 vowels (y, i, e, ae, o, u, and a), but the other reading we had about OE pronunciation maps 13, apparently long and short ones separately (i and I, e and ε, and the schwa, for example). How many of these do we need to worry about for the vowel map on the exam?

A very important question to raise. The fact is that neither the map in Freeborn, nor the one in “Reading OE” handout is really satisfactory. Freeborn’s is somewhat incomplete, as you need to know the IPA symbols and differences between I and i, e and É›, etc.
Here are the vowels I would like us to be able to map:

[I] [i], [e], [ɛ], [æ], [y], [u], [ʊ], [ɑ], [o], [ɔ]

These are the monovowels (we are not worrying about diphthongs for the purpose of the exam) listed on Freeborn 34.

“Reading OE” uses [ü] for [y] but I would prefer [y]. Where authorities disagree (is [y] front or mid?): you make the call!

I am excluding a few that “Reading OE” uses, but only because they don’t play a significant role in OE.

Some Terms

Can you refresh my memory on the definitions of apposition and hypercorrection and the context we discussed them in? I looked up apposition and came up with this definition:

ap·po·si·tion n :the relationship between two usually consecutive nouns or noun phrases that refer to the same person or thing and have the same relationship to other sentence elements.
This seems relevant to our course but I wasn’t sure if it was the correct one.

Hypercorrection, I am assuming is an overcorrection in terms of grammar- Just like after hearing “she and I” as being the proper phrase for so long, a person begins to use this rule in terms of “between you and I” ?

Hypercorrection: this is correct. Also relates to debates about descriptivism vs. prescriptivism. Hypercorrections tend to be key signifiers in such debates on both sides.
Apposition: Yes, your definition is correct. Apposition is also another word for “variation” which is a key element of OE poetic style, and gives us much evidence about the semantic associations of particular words, at least in poetry.

ME Dialects and King Cnut

Do we need to know any other dialectical differences in ME besides what was on that sheet we used in class? Also, I’ve been having trouble understanding exactly what the role of King Cnut was. I’ve looked him up and it says that
he conquered part of England and ruled from 1016-1035 and finally created the Danelaw when he reinstated the laws of King Edgar, but this doesn’t seem consistent with the information in Freeborn about the Danelaw happeningunder King Aelfred. Could you possible clarify his role for me?

ME dialects: study the major differences between northern and souther as outlined in Freeborn. Do also note the differences from the dialect exercise.

Cnut: did not institute the Danelaw. Alfred established it in a treaty with Guthrum. Cnut’s rule over England is evidence of the close connection between England and Scandinavia evidenced in culture and politics, and further evidenced in language (the ON 3d plural for instance). See Crystal, Interlude 3 (83 ff).

On Strong and Weak Nouns

I’ve been looking at the the differences between strong and weak nouns but am having trouble finding any general characteristics of strong and weaknouns besides the different endings for each. Is there a more general
difference? Or perhaps some kind of difference in the root?

It’s a really great question, because the “origins” of weak/strong in IE are fascinating. The strong declensions can be seen by their endings of course, and they have what are believed to be characteristic IE stems. If you’re curious, check out R. Lass, OE: A historical linguistic companion (1994), 124-26. But the quick answer is that OE weaks are of course distinguishable by their characteristic endings (-an, mostly!), and you can spot them this way:
masculine nouns that end in -a in N sg. like cnapa (boy), guma (man)
Feminine nouns that have N sg. ending in -e like nædre (serpent), sunne (sun)
Two neuter nouns that have N sg. in -e: eage (eye), eare (ear).

I got this message from a student:

I was going over the study guide this weekend an encountered a little bit of an issue with finding the vowel maps in the mouth. I know there is an OE vowel map of the mouth in Freeborn, but I had trouble constructing a ME mapping from the many present in the books. Is there any resource you would suggest for me to find the best vowel maps other than Freeborn?

I responded that making 2 vowel maps doesn’t make much sense, so concentrate on learning to map the OE vowels, and describe them (high, low, front, back, round, etc), and then concentrate on Freeborn ch. 6 to understand the changes from OE to ME. the exam itself will feature questions where you are given an OE or ME word, and you are asked to give the corresponding word in the other language, and give the IPA symbols for the two vowel sounds: e.g.

OE: _______  ME: ther[ɛ:]       PDE: there

And you would give þær [æ:] because OE [æ:] becomes [ɛ:] in ME (Freeborn 122).

Reading chapter 12 in Crystal, I was intrigued by his discussion on how extracts from the King James’ version of the Bible have now become common expressions in Modern English. Specifically, it was really interesting to see how specific phrases became integrated into everyday language while others only have a place in biblical texts.

As Crystal puts it, “Not every biblical allusion can be allowed to count as a lexical unit within Standard English, of course. It must achieve some degree of linguistic autonomy; it must be capable of being meaningful outside of its original biblical context”(276). Like him, I began to speculate about what exactly it is about the phrases, which have now become so common place, that makes them survive in the realm of every day speech. Is there some sort of unifying factor? My initial thought was that the allusions, which have evolved into Standard English phrases, invoke a sense of universal wisdom which readers of the Bible found applicable to pass on in everyday conversation. Certainly the phrases “man shall not live by bread alone”, “turn the other cheek” and “no man can serve two masters” serve as sound advice. I can see them being passed on in spoken English through generations for solely that reason.

Yet what about “one pearl of great price,” “last shall be the first, and the first shall be the last” or whited sepulchre”?  These phrases aren’t really words of wisdom but I feel they do have certain poetic air about them. Authors of the day or of future centuries have often been inspired to draw from the Bible. Thus, probably due to usage in popular literature these phrases have made their way into Standard English, similar to the way movie quotes have managed to become recognizable in every day conversation today.

Since I’m no expert on this subject, I’m interested in hearing what anyone else has to say on this matter. My reasons for this lexical occurrence are merely speculation. Does anyone have a more specific reason for how certain biblical phrases became so “popular”? 

We ran a bit short of time on 28 February, so I wanted to make a couple of quick points about comparing late ME/Early EMod (or EEMod?).

• 1. I hope no one thinks I’m trying to promote Wycliffite/Lollard religious ideas. We’re just interested in the language.
• B. Please hang on to the translations you produced in class, I had meant to ask to see them.
• Thirdly: I’m interested to know which you found more difficult to render into idiomatic PDE: Chaucer’s Parson or Hawisia Moone?

The “confession” had no glosses, did you find yourself needing any, and if so, for which words? Continue Reading »

Here’s an article from Slate (from 1996, so some of the cultural references are a bit dated) about the language of air travel, its specific vocabulary and cadence. http://www.slate.com/id/3165/