English 309-01
Fall, 2004

Project assignment sheet: Part III

Due date: April 7, 2006

The assignment must be typed--I assume on a computer.

Goal: The goal of this part of the project is to analyze a historical aspect of your corpus. The focus is on meaning and/or structural change, but not on pronunciation.

Transcribe your corpus in Standard English [not phonetics] (do not try to indicate accent, dialect, or idiolect, but do punctuate). It will probably not include the same sections you transcribed for the sound analysis, and, unless you choose #3, is likely to include segments from several parts of your tape. Transcribe only those passages which illustrate the analysis you choose from the list below. Include enough material for the reader to understand the context.

Write your analysis in approximately 750 words (three double-spaced pages), choosing one of the topics below as it applies to your corpus. Feel free to use the Oxford English Dictionary, a slang dictionary, or any other source that will enhance your analysis. A variety of on-line dictionaries are linked from the class website. Your point is to notice and point out changes in the English language over time.

1. If your sample includes speakers of different generations, indicate those differences in their speech that are due to historical change (slang, idiom, ongoing structural changes). Do not include children under the age of ten in this analysis.

2. Identify slang and formerly slang terms in your corpus. Which terms are currently slang, and therefore may disappear from English? Which terms entered English as slang and remained as part of standard vocabulary? Is anyone's choice of such terms representative of his/her generation?

3. Identify all nouns and verbs heard in thirty seconds of speech. Ignore auxiliary verbs, but for all other nouns and verbs do a historical analysis (all nouns and all verbs, but only nouns and verbs). Look each word up in the O.E.D. and decide whether the speaker is using it in one of the meanings it has had in the past, or in a current meaning. Is there more than one current meaning? How can you tell which meaning is intended? Do you find any ambiguous words which, even in context, could have more than one meaning?

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