WEEK 1

• Presentation of the course.
  

• Hands-on in the history of English: a passage from the Gospels (John 2, 1-11) was presented in class, in four versions: the Old English version from the so-called West-Saxon Gospels, c1000; the so-called Wycliffe's Bible c1390; Tyndale's Bible, 1534; King James Bible or the Authorized Version, 1611. Here you can find the slides presented in class, as well as an interlinear arrangement of the four versions. For your convenience, you can also download a glossed version of the Old English text.

• Informal introduction to the notion of loanword and the composition of the English vocabulary. Lexical replacement in the passage from the Gospels: presentation of a few examples.

• Here you can find the two short passages distributed in class. If you wish to complete the analysis of the origin of the vocabulary in the two passages, you can browse or download Skeat's Etymological Dictionary, available at https://archive.org/details/etymologicaldict00skea.

ASSIGNMENT:

Browse some standard handbooks on the history of English, limiting your analysis to the portions discussing loanwords in Old and Middle English. Compare the handbooks, noting the similarities and the differences in the way they cover this topic (you can do the assignment in pairs or small groups).
Suggested handbooks (all available at the University libraries):