English Historical Lexicology - Einzelansicht

The seminar will take place in a synchronic online format in the form of zoom meetings on Thursdays, 10:15-11:45 am.

This course deals with changes in the lexicon of the English language from its beginning up to the present day. We will start out with some general assumptions about the units in the lexicon of a language and how they are related to each other. Then we will discuss important mechanisms of lexical and semantic change with a special focus on lexical borrowing, word formation and semantic change. In the following we will chronologically go through the history of English and, based on students‘ presentations, investigate selected topics related to the changes in the English lexicon. Such topics may be related to: the structure of the Old / Middle / Early Modern English lexicon; the Celtic, Latin, Scandinavian, French influence on the English lexicon; Word formation patterns in Old-, Middle, Early Modern English; Semantic change; the enrichment of the English vocabulary due to the colonial expansion; the increasing productivity of zero derivation and other types of word formation in Modern English; changes in the English lexicon due to the new media; the use of corpora in the study of English Historical Lexicology. The precise topics will be fixed and distributed in the first session. At the end of the semester students shall have acquired an understanding of certain mechanisms of lexical-semantic change in the history of English and shall be able to construe a hypothetical linguistic project of their own in the field of English Historical Lexicology.