Historical Linguistics 3130 A

Exercise 1.1 advice

I assigned you exercise 1.1 from the textbook to be discussed on Monday. I should have emphasized that I don't expect you to spend hours and hours on it. As long as you have a few points written down, you'll have something to say at the next class. In fact, if you have one or two things to say about 3 of the 5 parts, that should be good enough. Some hints:

1. For the first part, finding letters in newspapers is probably easiest using the Internet. You could try the news feed in the links column at the left of this page. Try looking for things on Google News (link is at the left near the bottom). Through the uOttawa library, you can search The Toronto Star Pages of the Past for any 5-year period since the paper began. You can specify only editorials/opinion/letters. The trick is knowing what word or phrase to search for. I leave that to your imagination ("grammar" might be good). It wouldn't hurt to include "letters" or "letters to the editor" as one of your search terms. Letters to the Editor are generally in section A, so I wouldn't bother to look at any other page. The Globe and Mail might also be good (also available back to 1844 with you library password). They seem to get a lot of letters about English.
2. The "Ask your friends and family" question should be quick and easy for anyone.
3. As for finding books about grammar, see if you have one lying around somewhere. You can look in the library if you want, but don't good too far out of your way.
4. Question 4 is more of a thinking question. You should be able to research it from your own head, so I expect everyone to have at least one point for that.
5. The last question about etiquette books really would require a trip to the library unless you have one of those lying around. I have a lot of books, but I don't know that I have one about etiquette. Don't worry if you have nothing for this, but it would be nice if someone had a comment for this question.

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