#TeamEnglish@CMS_Kottayam: The learner in me, hand in hand with the teacher in you!

  Dulce Et Decorum Est Modernism and the World War: War Poets Modernism is a movement that originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. World War I (1914- 1918) falls in this period. In England, this period saw the origin of a substantial number of important poets who were soldiers, writing about their experiences of war. A number of them died on the battlefield, most famously Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, and Charles Sorley. Others including Ivor Gurney and Siegfried Sassoon survived but were scarred by their experiences, and this was reflected in their poetry. These poets came to be known as War Poets. A war poet is a poet writing in time of and on the subject of war. The term is applied especially to those in military service during World War I. Visit website:  http://www.warpoetry.co.uk The Poet: Wilfred Edward Salter Owen  MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) Wilfred Owen is considered as one of the War Poets. He was an E...

Immediate Constituent Analysis (IC Analysis) Sentences are not simply random words strung together by means of various devices. English, like every other language has a limited number of recurring sentence patterns. A fundamental technique of syntactic analysis is to identify these patterns by a process of successive substitution. The linguistic procedure which divides sentences into the component parts or constituents is known as Constituent Analysis. The term was first introduced by Leonard Bloomfield and systematized with theoretical formulations by Roulon Wells and Zelling Harris. eg:                          The dog bit the burglar                                      /              \                             The dog...

  Middle English Dialects Norman French, a northern dialect of France, spoken by the invaders, developed into Anglo-Norman in England. For sometime English and Norman French were used side by side, the latter enjoying social prestige and gradually the two mingled, giving rise to what is called Middle English. Middle English had a variety of dialects, more numerous and divergent than those of OE.  Northern   (corresponding to OE Northumbrian). This includes the dialects of countries north of the Humber and the lowlands of Scotland. The Midland group  (corresponding to OE Mercian). This includes the dialects of the vast central area, north of the Thames and south of the Humber. This group can be sub-divided into East Midland, West Midland, South Midland, North Midland and Central Midland. it is the East Midland dialect (EMD) which later emerged as the standard language of the period, for the following reasons. It was the dialect in which Geoffrey Chaucer, the most impo...

 Immanuel Kant YouTube link to the lecture:   Immanuel Kant Life 18 th c. philosopher Born in Prussia Family: father, a saddler; mother, an uneducated woman, noted for her remarkable character and intelligence. Religious influence: Pietist branch of the Lutheran Church. Stress on inner life. Kant confining himself to his own village. Senility and death Works Three Critiques – of Pure Reason, of Practical Reason, of Judgement What is Enlightenment? Kant and The Enlightenment A spokesman of the French intellectual dynamism. (“What is Enlightenment?”) But was against the extravagant claims made on behalf of reason: advocated the idea that there are realms of reality that are opaque to reason; they are illuminated by flashes of insight. (Did not undermine the role of reason; but objected to the denial of the orders of reality which could not be verified by reason. We should not restrict knowledge to the testimony of the senses.) Kant’s respect for Hume: Kant has remarked that Hum...

 Structuralism In the 20th century the emphasis shifted from language change to language description. Instead of looking at how a selection of items changed in a number of different languages, linguists began to concentrate on describing single languages at one particular point in time. This is the synchronic study of language or synchronic linguistics. In America, linguistics began as an offshoot of anthropology. Franz Baaz (1852 - 1934) Edward Saper (1884 - 1934) Leonard Bloomfield (1884 - 1934) where some of the anthropologists turned linguists. In 1933 Leonard Bloomfield's monumental word language known as the bible of structuralism attempted to lay down rigorous procedures for the description of any language. Bloomfield considered that linguistics deal be objectively why systematically with observable data. He was more interested in the way items were arranged than in meaning. Bloomfieldian era existed for more than 20 years and it had an immense influence on language study. D...

 Compound words It consist of two or three morphemes of which at least two are free morphemes. (a) Two-free morphemes mother tongue, girlfriend, classmate (b) Three-free morphemes mother-in-law, chief-of-staff (c) Two-free morphemes + One bound morpheme tax-collector, class teacher (d) Two-free morphemes + two bound morpheme elevator-operator (e) Three-free morphemes + one bound morpheme football player Sub compounds and co-compounds  Tatspurusa Dwanda Tatpurusa is a class of words having a first constituent, a noun or noun stem which modifies the second constituent by standing in relation to it of a possessor as in sheep's skin, a thing possessed as in motor boat, object of action as in shoe-maker. Agent as man-made, instrument as in landlocked. In Sanskrit tatpurusa means 'his servant'. French 'Tad' means 'that one'. Dwanda Is a class of compound words having two immediate constituents that are equal in rank and related to each other as if joined by '...

 Historians of the English language distinguish three main stages or periods in its development. First is the Old English or the Anglo-Saxon period, extending from 600-1100 A.D., followed by the Middle English period, from 1100-1500 and finally Modern English from 1500 onwards. The Old English Period This period extends from the earliest written documents, about the close of the 7th century to about 1100 by which time the effects of the Norman Conquest became perceptible. This period begin with the arrival of the Germanic tribes around 600 A.D. The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, the three main tribes started filtering in during the last years of the Roman rule, which ended in 410 A.D. They displaced the original Celtic inhabitants of Britain and gave it a new name, England - the land of the Angles, and a new language, English - the language of the Angles. Old English, the earliest form of English, resulted from the dialects of these three tribes rolling together into one nationa...

Do Something, Brother M Gopalakrishna Adiga (1918-1992): Kannada poet. Translated Ibsen and Whitman into Kannada. Edited Sakshi, a literary magazine I. Do something, brother: keep doing something, anything; you mustn’t be idle. pull out this plant, nip this little leaf, crush that flower. There’s grass, run your brand through it, burn it like Lanka. Tiny butterflies, parrots, sparrows— chase them, catch them, pluck their wings, pull out their fur and feather. There, in the garden, jasmine and the banana’s gold grow for the wild elephant’s feet. I I. All over the walls virility’s master-switches itch for your fingers; close your eyes and pull down twenty of them. Earth, water, the skies, they’re all your geese with golden eggs: gouge them out, slash them. ‘Do, or die’, they say. Disasters are the test for your genius’s galloping dance: something must crash every minute. Brother, act, act at once, do something. Thought’s weights and measures are all for the past, for the...