AN AUTOPSY OF THORN
Although much scholarly ink has been spilled on the topic of changes in spoken English over the centuries, precious little has been put to paper on the topic of mutations in the orthography, and even less about the phasing in and out of particular characters. In particular, the letter thorn, which started out as a representation of the sound in modern English modeled by the “th”, has had little or no attention paid to it. The question is, why would English adopt this letter into the otherwise Roman alphabet, only to lose it a couple centuries later?
The first step toward answering this question will be to look at the dates during which thorn was used. These can be established fairly easily by examining texts, so as to find its first appearances and its final appearances in the English language. Once these are known, examining the culture and language of the time should be indicative of the rough context in which the thorn was preserved; once these have been established, I would only need to find a set of factors that were lost at roughly the same as the thorn in order to come to a conclusion as to its cause of death, as it were.
Sources:
Nevalainen, Terttu, and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. Historical Sociolinguistics, Hong Kong: Pearson Education Limited, 2003.
Smith, Jeremy J. An Historical Study of English: Function, Form, and Change. New York: Routledge, 1996.
4 replies on “Peter’s MURC Proposal Draft”
Looks fairly solid, only some weird phrasings. The first sentence seems really…. frivolous. I think you should cut the phrases “scholarly ink” and “precious little”. They just make it sound like you’re trying to fill up space or something. Ditto with the ’cause of death’ thing at the end. (actually I think the phrase ‘as it were’ just annoys me for some reason.) Also, considering that you’re starting with literally nothing being known about the subject, saying that you’ll come to some sort of solid conclusion just by seeing what factors (what kind of factors are you looking for? You might want to expand on that) happen to be lost at the same time seems a bit of a stretch.
I find ‘…the topic of changes in spoken English…’ in the first sentence awkward. A bit wordy. Perhaps: ‘…over changes in spoken English..’
I’m not bothered by ‘scholarly ink’.
Also, it’s not immediately obvious that ‘thorn’ refers to a letter. Particularly in the title and in the second sentence:
“In particular, the letter thorn, which…”
Perhaps capitalizing the first letter (and not the rest), or putting in single quotes would help?
I like your proposal title, “AN AUTOPSY OF THORN” – short and sweet.
A couple of quick comments:
1. I wonder if you could provide some details about the likely factors in ‘I would only need to find a set of factors that were lost at roughly the same as the thorn—‘.
2. Insert the references (authors’ names) in the body of the text, wherever appropriate.