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27 Cards in this Set
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White Man's Burden (Ch. 8) |
(481) Colonization was this. It was the duty of civilized men and women to shoulder, even though it meant that the civilized men and women would be misunderstood and abused by those being "rescued" from their supposedly primitive, backward cultures. It is satirized in a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. The poem is a rhetorical command to white men to colonize and rule other nations for the benefit of those people. |
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Describe some of the differences between Present Day British and Present Day American in terms of phonology? |
1. In general, ModBr tends to be non-rhotic, meaning that /r/ following a vowel (post-vocalic r) tends to be dropped. American English is rhotic, except for speakers in the Tidewater and New England regions.
2. In regard to simple vowels and the diphthong /aI/, British RP tends to:
a. employ /e/ for American /ae/, as in Br. apricot.
b. use /a/ for American /e/, as in Br. tomato, gala, vase, charade
c. use /I? or /i/ for American /aI/, as in Br. albino, dynasty, geyser, migraine, privacy
d. use /a/ for American "flat a" /ae/, as in Br. dance /dans/, khaki /kakI/, dahlia /dalja/, wrath /rath/, but upon occasion /ae/ for American /a/ as in Br. pasta and wigwam
e. use long open o for American /a/, as in Br. pot, hot, not, rot, cot, and trauma.
3. Even when the vowels are roughly equivalent, British English employs a different set of accentuation principles. In the following words, the accentuated syllables are placed in bold letters to show how standard British pronounces: oregano, paprika, alternate, ballet, capillary, and garage.
The phonetic transcriptions indicate how the accent shift affects the individual vowels--vowels in accented syllable usually are not pronounced in an undifferentiated way.
4. British speakers have a tendency to pronounce foreign borrowings as if the spelling implied English phonetics--in effect to "Anglicize" foreign words, whereas Americans tend to adopt a pronunciation more closely aligned to the original language's. This is a time honored tradition in English.
5. British speakers also use five diphthongs not found in Standard American English. These are: (see Ch. 8, pg. 514)
6. A host of seemingly anomalous pronunciations appear in British English, such as ate, squirrel, zenith, schedule, beta, err, figure, lasso, lieutenant |
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Received Pronunciation (RP) |
Over the course of the 19th century, Standard British developed from the speech of the upper class Britons and spread under the influence of the British public schools and journalism. The public schools in England were what Americans consider private education in that in order to attend one had to pay tuition. The public school system forced upon boys a regularity of pronunciation and grammatical usage appropriate to their station in life--the language of the upper classes. Furthermore, this language was enforced by the boys themselves. Though the boys in these schools came from all regions of England, they left with a uniform language that was largely Southeastern. This became the language of power and commerce, education and journalism. It was named RP--received pronunciation, the language of the higher social classes. It is the language of the BBC and print media. |
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Borrowing |
In the 19th century a confluence of publishing and folkloric studies threw a spotlight on the various regional dialects of British English--the two most important borrowings were Scottish and Irish. |
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Blends |
(portmanteau words) is a new word created from the morphemes of two or more other words. In PDE, blends are popular once words arise from a new entity or concept that combines elements of two common words already in the language. For example, electric+execute=electrocute |
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acronym |
increased importance of the military and technology in American and British society. For example, RADAR (radio detecting and ranging) or SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) |
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extensions |
occurs when a product name or the name of a famous person becomes a common noun |
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hyponym |
when the suffixes -dom and -ster are used to form new nouns, while -ize and -ate are used to form new verbs. It widens the nouns concept to include all items of a similar nature (ie. moving it from a single term to a hyponym) For example, "babydom", "bachelordom", "serfdom", "boredom", "gangster", "mobster", "dumpster" |
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conversion |
is a method by which words develop a polysemus character over a period of time, which individual words have been doing since the earliest times.
For example, "fingerprint" which was originally a noun is also a verb and an adjective. |
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clipping |
not a 20th century phenomenon, making long words shorter
For example, "math" (mathematics), "gym" (gymnasium), "vibes" (vibrations), and "disco" (discotheque) |
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back-formaton |
similar to clipping, in that the process' result is a shorter word drawn drawn from the original, but it differs from clipping in that back formation creates a new part of speech, whereas clipping does not.
For example, the noun "editor" first appeared in print in 1649, but by 1791, it had given rise to a new word, a verb "to edit" |
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The Melting Pot |
during the last decade of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century, over 18 million humans entered the U.S. in a tsunami-sized movt. that has come to be known as the "Great Wave." This particular group of immigrants was significantly different from any other group in America before. These were the "New Immigrants" from Southern and Eastern Europe (Italy, Hungary, and Russia)--They were not from Northern Europe (ie. the British Isles, Germany, or Scandanavia)
They were largely unskilled laborers attracted to the northern tier states with their coal mines, steel mills, and automobile factories. America needed an abundant supply of cheap labor. |
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Oklahoma Dust Bowl |
The two most important mass migrations of the early 20th century were the "Great Migration" of African-Americans to the North and West and the migration of poor whites from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California.
The Great Migration occurred sporadically between 1910 and 1970, and it represents the largest migration of all time by a simple group of Americans.
The movement was set in motion by the lack of immigrant labor attending the halt of the Great Wave before and during WWI.
The second major internal migration involved thousands of poor white farmers who moved to Southern California between 1934-37. In the early 20th century, technological advances such as the development of hardier strains of wheat and corn and the development of specialized farming machinery conspired to entice farmers to expand their crops and use more and more available land. |
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Harlem Renaissance |
Occurred during the 1920's to 1940's in Harlem, NYC. This was a mass migration of African-Americans to Harlem. It is estimated that 330,000 African-Americans settled in Harlem during this period. The group consisted of musicians, writers, intellectuals, and painters, such as William H. Johnson of Florence, SC. |
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Identify whether sentences containing collective nouns are British English or American English. |
In American grade schools, students are taught to treat collective nouns as singulars when the group is acting in concert and as plurals when the members of the group are acting separately, so that an American might write:
The committee is going to take up that question today.
or
The faculty are writing their letters of resignation.
In Britain, collective nouns are always plural, so that one says:
Alisa have a flight leaving for Rome at 10a.m..
The government are having a major meeting this afternoon.
Nouns representing unmeasurable quantities are generally not pluralized in England, so that one does not say.
The new technologies being developed at Hewlett-Packard. (American)
but rather
The new forms of technology being developed at Hewlett Packard. |
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Discuss the development and importance of the OED. |
The Philological Society's major contribution to the English language was not Spelling Reform but a dictionary, the best dictionary of its kind that has ever been produced. This new English Dictionary, due to the fact that the Oxford University Press subsidized its production after 1879.
The OED's story begins in the 1850's when it became clear to those involved in the debate on spelling reform that Dr. Johnson's Dictionary no longer reflected the state of the language.
Too many new words had entered; too many old ones had fallen out; and newer principles of linguistic analysis had been developed to analyze word origins.
In 1857, the Philological Society formed a committee led by Herbert Coleridge and Richard Trench (both of whom had written brief histories of English) to analyze Johnson's and Webster's dictionaries and to write a supplement to them. |
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What was the Spelling Reform Assoc. and the U.S. Simplified Spelling Board, and where do they stand today? |
Spelling Reform Assoc.:
In 1876, the Spelling Reform Assoc. was formed. Linguists Thomas Lounsberry and Charles Hall Grandgent and authors Brander Matthews and William Dean Howells were members. The president of the SRA (Francis A. March) had seen some of Webster's lectures while a student at Amherst College. He later wrote the Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language, which detailed English's connections with PIE.
In March 1893, the Assoc. published March's The Spelling Reform, which proposed a series of respellings as well as a rationale for change. At almost the same time (1879), The Chicago Tribune had begun respelling words that it found problematic. The paper's owner, Joseph Medill, had bought out the paper (saving it from bankruptcy), and he felt his paper held most potent weapon for instituting spelling reform.
His grandson and successor, Robert R. McCormick, continued the spelling reforms, with about 100 simplified spellings being adopted between 1934 and 1949. They include:
dialog instead of dialogue fantom instead of phantom crum instead of crumb herse instead of hearse rime instead of rhyme lether instead of leather sherif instead of sheriff tarif instead of tariff frate instead of freight sofomore instead of sophomore
By 1975, however, the paper went back to the original spelling of these words (except for a few), as their revised system was causing confusion in Illinois classrooms.
In 1883, yet another attempt was made by the American Philological Association, a group of scholars dedicated to all matters philological (linguistics, especially historical and comparative linguistics) or classical in nature.
They adopted a series of ten new spelling rules (in conjunction with the Philological Society of London). They were:
1. drop the silent -e: liv, div, abuv, axl 2. -re>-er: theater, center 3. pronounced : fether, heven, fezent 4. pronounced: munkey, becum, abuv 5. no unnecessary double consonants: acomodat, catl, ketl 6) <-d, -ed> pronounced /t/> : crusht, thankt, deckt 7) pronounced : fezent, faze, fonetic 8) pronounced : lafter, enuf 9) pronounced : fezent, wiz 10) > : mach, thach, scrach
Some other spelling reforms included:
ak for ache analog for analogue balif for bailiff gard for guard saffire for sapphire tho for though thru for through
The only ones that stuck (analog, tho, and thru), which were also changes seen in the National Education Association's adoption of twelve spelling simplifications for its publications--tho, altho, thoro, thorofare, thru, thruout, program, catalog, prolog, decalog, demagog, and pedagog.
In 1906, the US Simplified Spelling Board was formed; members included: Funk of Funk and Wagnall's, Murray, Furnivall, Skeat, Holt, Mark Twain, and Teddy Roosevelt.
In a 14-year span, they published over 30 pamphlets and created a 300 word list of revised and simplified spellings.
Even though Roosevelt issued an executive order to the GPO (Govt. Printing Office) in August 1906, mandating that all government documents use the USSSB's spelling reforms, the GPO avoided doing so until Congress reconvened and quickly passed a bill requiring the GPO to use the spellings specified in standard dictionaries.
While many of the reformed spellings were ultimately accepted here in the US:
ax for axe dike for dyke defense for defence primeval for primeaval theater for theatre
Most were not:
tho for though snapt for snapped wisht for wished winkt for winked gazel for gazelle domicil for domicile cutlas for cutlass annoyd for annoyed
The Board had been financially supported by Andrew Carnegie, and upon his death in 1919, it lost almost all funding. In 1946, the USSSB merged with the British Spelling Reform Assoc. to the American Literacy Council. The ALC and its sister foundation, the Simplified Spelling Society, continue to advocate for spelling reform. |
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What are three major sources of the distinctive Jamaican lexicon? |
1. In 1494, Christopher Columbus made his second voyage to the New World and discovered Jamaica (claiming it for Spain). The indigenous people were quickly decimated.
2. In the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell sent troops to take the islands by force; the Spaniards fled, and Jamaica became the primary British port in the West Indies. It also became a primary point of entry for African slaves being transported to the United States.
3. In 1838, slave trade was outlawed by the British government; the island remained an agricultural colony until 1962, when Jamaica was granted independence from Great Britain. The language that remained behind was colored by this past; Jamaican English retains remnants of the pidgin slaveholders used to communicate with their slaves. It is a creole. |
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What sort of words entered the English lexicon from India? |
woven goods:
dungaree gunny chintz
cultural artifacts:
tamarind chitty pundit shampoo swami jungle babu sari suttee tattoo
After 1800:
raj ganga chupatti doob dinghy thug chutney maharaja guar hookum loot basmati maharanee dandy
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What sort of words entered the English lexicon from Africa? |
kourbash burkah shadoof wadi erg loofah ashkari
words dating back to the 1600's:
assegi calabash azure camphor caliph artichoke antimony almanac carafe caramel houri cigar
South Africa was first invaded by the Dutch, who set up the Cape Town Colony in 1652, but lost to the British in 1795.
spoor wildebeast aardvark aasvogel Boer trek cartel commando comandeer chimpanzee cola whydah sassy-tree |
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What sort of words entered the English lexicon from Australasia? |
From the 18th century onwards, the British East India Co. carried on trade not only with India, but also with China, mostly for tea, silk, and porcelain.
End of the nineteenth century, when Thomas Lipton invented the teabag and tea production moved onto plantations in Malaysia and Thailand, all teas come from China.
Until the middle of the 19th century, Britain had to pay tribute to whatever Chinese dynasty was in power in order to carry on trade, but after 1865, the Ch'ing Dynasty dropped any relation between trade and tribute, so commerce became even more profitable, esp. since Britain had obtained a major port and colony in 1841 on the island of Hong Kong. The flourishing of China Trade added numerous words to English, particularly:
tea:
bohea pekoe souchong oolong oopack
foodstuffs:
ginseng kumquat ketchup loquat
silks:
pongee sychee
games:
fantan pakapoo mahjong
Assorted cultural commodities and oddities:
kaolin tai chi tao chin chin feng-shui kowtow taipan chop-chop tung oil judo wok
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Spelling reform in Britain began in what industry? Why? |
Typography:
The graphics representations for the English language frequently did not match the pronunciation of the word; in early 19th century Britain, spelling reform was barely discussed by linguists, but it was discussed by typographers.
The Phonotypic Journal called for reform, eventually involving major linguists and British lexicographers, including Walter Skeat and Richard Morris. |
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Syntactic and grammatical shifts over the past 200 years have been relatively minor: |
the expansion in use of participle verbs (phrasal verbs made up of a verb and a preposition: throw up, rip off, turn out)
a loss of the subjunctive mood in speech (the proper "if I were you" becoming "if I was you"
a loss of the who/whom distinction in speech ("who" for subjects, "whom" for objects)
expansion of the "got-passive" ("He got caught shoplifting" or "She got fired yesterday")
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What group contributed the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) to the English language? |
The Philological Society |
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What led the Philological Society in Britain to make the OED? |
In the 1850's, people realized that Dr. Johnson's Dictionary really didn't meet people's needs or reflect the actual state of the language (too many words had entered or left the language, and new principles of linguistic analysis had helped uncover word origins). |
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In 1857, the Philological Society formed a committee led by Herbert Coleridge and Richard Trench to analyze Johnson's and Webster's dictionaries and supplement them. |
Instead of adding a supplement to the American dictionary, they made a whole new dictionary called the Oxford English Dictionary. The organization resolved to publish the OED based on "historical principles" listing every word ever used in English from 425 to the present, with information about the word's development, various spellings, and various meanings. Each definition would also include examples from literature to explicate usage. |
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What is the Early English Text Society (EETS) and who was their leader? |
Frederick Furnivall began the EETS in 1864 to provide the scholarly texts of Old and Middle English works not yet published and thus available. Because of him, many texts appeared for study: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Book of Margery Kempe, Piers the Plowman, and Chaucer's translation of The Consolation of Philosophy. |
