History of English

Description

English is not a single monolithic entity; it comes in many different varieties, depending on factors like geography, the social status of its speakers and whether it is used as a first or second language.  In order to understand how English became so multi-faceted, this course traces the development of the language from its inception in 5th Century early Germanic Britain, through the various social changes that shaped its trajectory in the middle ages to its eventual spread to other shores where today it is a global lingua franca.   Although the focus in this course will primarily be on the changing linguistic structure of English (i.e. how the phonological, morphological and syntactic system changed over a millennium), in order to understand why these changes took place, it will also be necessary to look at the changing society in which English was being used.  This course will therefore offer both a linguistic and a social history of English.