ENG501 - History of English Language

Q1. In 1635, Cardinal Richelieu offered a royal charter to a small group of men, who for several years had been meeting once a week to talk about books and to exchange views on literature. The original group was composed of only six or eight; the maximum membership was set at forty. It was named as ‘French Academy.’ Write the THREE major aims of French Academy. (3 Marks) Keeping in mind those three aims, what is your opinion about the contribution of French Academy for French language? (7 Marks) Note: Please go through topic 131 of the handouts for guidance. Q2. Unlike Italian and French language academies, no academy was built for English language. The idea further died down with the publication of A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson, A.M. in 1755. Write a note on the role the above mentioned dictionary played for English language in the 18th century. Also, write down the ‘defects’ and ‘strengths’ of the dictionary. Note: Please go through topic 135 of the handouts for guidance.(10 Marks)

MA ELT History of English Language (ENG 501) Fall 2019 Assignment No. 1 Total Marks: 20 Lectures: 1-8 Instructions: • Upload your assignments in a proper format, i.e. MS word file. Corrupt files will be awarded zero marks. • The assignments should be zoomed in at 100%. • Please avoid plagiarism; plagiarized work will be marked zero. • After the due date, the assignments submitted via email would NOT be entertained. • Please avoid submitting copied assignments; otherwise, such a case would be referred to the discipline committee and awarded zero marks. • The font color should be preferably black and font size 12 Times New Roman. Q.1 (a) Language began when humans started naming objects, actions and phenomena after a recognizable sound associated with it in real life. The origin of language in the human species has been the topic of scholarly discussions for several centuries. Languages have been taking birth and some of them have been dying. From the following table, select the languages as being dead or alive, mention the active speakers of the alive languages, and give the reason/s which caused the now dead languages to die. (10 Marks) Sr. Language Names Dead Alive Active Members of Alive Languages Reason(s) for Cause of Death 1 Latin 2 Estonian 3 Hungarian 4 Sanskrit 5 Biblical Hebrew Q.2 All languages are either synthetic or analytical. A synthetic language shows grammatical relationships through inflectional change in the words, whereas an analytical language represents the grammatical relationships through word order. English was once synthetic but over time has become an analytical language. Keeping this in mind, discuss the use of gender (Masculine, Feminine, Neuter) in analytical languages (modern English) as well as in synthetic languages (like French or Urdu). (10 Marks)