328 Study Questions: Baugh Chapter One: "English
Present and Future"
Vocabulary:
plagiarism, cognate, loan word, dead language, linguistic
analogy, linguistics, first language, lingua franca,
artificial language, loan words, inflection, grammatical
gender, idiom, orthography
1.2 According to the introductory chapter,
what event in 597 brought England into contact with "Latin
civilization"?
What was the result of the Scandinavian invasions?
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, English became mainly
the language of what sort of social class?
1.3 According to Baugh, what makes Latin
a dead language, as opposed to a living
language like English?
List three ways living languages tend to change over time.
1.4 According to Baugh, what makes a language
important? Do you buy this argument, or do you find it debatable?
Why?
1.5 How many English speakers exist in
the world who speak English as their first language, according
to Baugh?
What language has the most speakers in the world, according
to Baugh?
In addition to the number of people who speak a language,
and the extent of geographic area in which a language is
spoken, Baugh suggests at least two other factors indicate
how important a language is. What are these two other factors?
1.6 What factors according to Baugh would
make one initially think that English is going to go into
a decline after four centuries of expansion? What factors
according to Baugh make this unlikely on further reflection?
1.7 What are Volapük and Esperanto?
What factors make it unlikely that any artificial language
will become an international standard language?
1.8 (none)
1.9 The English language is normally classified
as what sort of language? (a) Germanic, (b) Romance, (c)
Volapük, (d) Hellenic, (e) semi-Gothic.
What advantage does English have in its vocabulary over
many other languages, according to Baugh?
Give an example of a word English has borrowed from each
of the following languages: (To
really impress your teacher, consult a dictionary
for etymological entries and give any one example
of a word English has borrowed from the following languages
that Baugh doesn't list):
- Italian?
- Spanish?
- Greek?
- Russian?
- Persian?
1.10 What is a second valuable asset English
has in comparison to other languages when we consider English's
grammatical inflections?
The evolution of English within known history has been a
story of what, according to Baugh?
In terms of nouns, what are the only the only two types
of inflections remaining in most English nouns?
1.11 What is a third valuable asset English
has in comparison to other languages regarding gender? How
many grammatical genders do most modern Romance languages
have? How many grammatical genders do most modern Germanic
languages have? How many grammatical genders does Modern
English have (trick question!)?
How closely does grammatical gender coincide with "natural"
or "biological" gender?
When did English "strip away" inflections for
grammatical gender (i.e., during what period of English)?
1.12 What disadvantage does English have
for foreign speakers in comparison to other languages regarding
idiomatic expressions?
What disadvantage does English have in regards to its spelling
system?
What would characterize an ideal system of alphabetic writing?
What are some examples of how English as a written language
does not match this ideal?