Modern Grammar - Assignment 1 James Madison University

Instructions: Please write or type your answers in a legible form for submission. Also, please use full-sized sheets of paper and remember to include your name at the top of the assignment. Multiple pages should be stapled together.

1. Look over the online syllabus (educ.jmu.edu/~cotesa/eng310s17.html) and find the quote at the bottom of the syllabus. Copy it down for this assignment and also write down what you think Wittgenstein might have meant by these words. Add any questions you may have about the syllabus. :)
2. How would you characterize your own English dialect? (If your first thought is "none" or "normal", try again after doing the reading and giving it some thought. :) )
3. What is your most or least favorite English dialect and why? (Is it something in the pronunciation, the word choices, the sentence structures, or something else?)
4. Give an example of each of the following:
   1. Some sentence structure, word, or expression that a friend uses that you don't use (or vice versa).
   2. Some sentence structure, word, or expression which you have been told is "wrong" but which really sounds fine to you.
   3. Some word, expression, or sentence structure that was commonly used by English speakers at one point in time but that is now considered wrong or archaic.
   4. Some word, expression, or sentence structure that sounds okay to you in conversation but not in writing.
5. Answer the following questions from the Chapter One reading:
   1. What is the name for the kind of rules contained in a DESCRIPTIVE Grammar?
   2. What is one dimension, other than geographic ("by space"), of language variation?
   3. What are the two components of a grammar in the "narrow" sense of the term?
6. Do Exercise 1 on page 3 of your textbook.
7. Do Exercise 5 on pages 9-10 of your textbook.