Both these assignments are based on the following passage from Charles Johnson's Dreamer (NY: Knopf, 1998: 19-20.) #4 is due in class on Mon. 5 October. #5 is due in class on Mon. 12 October.
#4: For each word in the passage, use a historical dictionary to discover how the word entered the English language. Note two things: the source language and the date of entry into English. Note: if a dictionary gives the source of a word simply as "Old English," with no ultimate source indicated, the ultimate source is probably prehistoric West Germanic.
Make a chart. What percentage of these words entered Old English from earlier West Germanic? What percentage entered from other languages?
Note very carefully the distinction between sources and cognates. Many English words are cognate to words in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Gothic, and Old High German, but did not enter the English language from those languages. Others did enter from Latin or Greek and therefore truly trace their source to those languages. Almost no English words come from Old High German or from Gothic. Where historical dictionaries note forms in those Germanic languages, they are cognates.
#5: Go back and study, with your dictionary, as many words in the passage as you can, particularly the long and/or interesting words. Trace the historical changes in meaning that the words have undergone. Most words have several different but related meanings, and most have undergone semantic shifts during their history in English. Note borrowed words that have changed in meaning from their source language meanings.
He couldn't lock the front door, so winos were free to piss in the entryway. In other words, the place where he'd brought his family was a urinal. . . . High above his door a single tungsten bulb buzzed in a halo of swirling dust motes the last few seconds before its filament flimmered out. Inside, their four rooms--hollow rinds filled with secondhand furniture--were arranged boxcar style (one for sitting, two for sleeping, and a miserable little kitchen) and were blisteringly hot and claustrophobic in the summer of 1966, even when his wife threw open the windows, for whatever breezes came through the rooms carried as well petroleum fumes and loud conversations and the roar of traffic from the streets below. Was this worth ninety dollars a month?