A Level English Language B
If anyone has top exemplar answers could you please share them over here.
Hello! I got 120/120 in the final exam (and 95% overall) for this subject in 2011, so if you have any specific questions please feel free to ask and I will do my best to help.
I assume it's still CLA and language change/development, right?
I assume it's still CLA and language change/development, right?
Here is a practice question answer from back then: it was graded A.
Language Change – Question 4
Text J, an excerpt from “The History of Foure-Footed Beastes”, published in 1609, evidences an array of interesting examples of significant language change through the ages, encompassing changes of lexical, graphemic, grammatical, semantical and graphological change.
The first evidence of archaism comes in the very title of the extract itself; multiple archaic graphemic representations of “s” are present, more akin in presentation to a lowercase f than the modern s, having a right-curving ascender and a straight descender. Additionally, in this entitlement, the use of the archaic inflection “es” to denote a plural of “beasts”; this inflection has since been truncated to merely “s”, as society has moved away from the traditional inflection that the prescriptivist movement, those who prescribed the correct and proper use of language, and towards a more simplistic approach in which language is merely studied, and not guided by scholars; this is known as descriptivism. A prescriptivist attitude is followed here largely due to stylistic convention, and also due to the nature of the text; as an encyclopaedia, it is a scholastic text for the facilitation of education, and as only an extrzemely small and privileged section of society could read at the time of this text’s publication (or indeed afford books, due to the lack of an industrialized production process), a highly formal register and traditional style are employed; graphologically, the typeface employed is serifed, conveying a sense of authority and tradition.
The use of the word “beastes” itself evidences language change; whereas the word would be used to refer to any non-human creature at the time of publication, it is now generally used to refer to creatures of an abhorrent aspect; the word has undergone a process of pejoration, and now carries negative status.
An example of neologism can be inferred from the presence of the circumlocutory phrase “foure-footed beastes”; the word “quadrupedal” would now be employed, as language seeks of eschew obfuscation and espouse elucidation. “Quadrupedal” stems from Latin “quad” for four and “ped” for foot; hence, this word would be employed by modern academic documents. This word was “coined”, or created, after the publication of this text, and therefore illustrates how neologisms can be created in order to better appeal to brevity.
A notable graphological element present in text J is that of a hand-drawn illustration of an ape; due to the complete lack of photographic equipment at the time of the creation of this data, the only way in which to incorporate illustrations into text was by creating the image either by memory or by sight, by hand. Modern encyclopaedias, when utilizing images, will almost certainly use photographs. This evidences a way in which technological development has influenced the way in which language and texts are produced. Additionally, a caption, “THE APE”, is supplied, though it is above the image; in modern layouts, one would expect the caption to fall below the image.
Another archaic example of graphological conventions is the presence of an ornate opening grapheme, decorated in calligraphic style. This reflects the expensive nature of the text; much effort is put into the presentation of the book, which would likely be a status symbol among learned men. Such ornamentation is typically eschewed in modern texts, as printing processes have evolved to the point at which persons can publish their own texts cheaply from their own homes, and indeed, with the rise of E-readers and similar technology, publishing works no longer requires any physical resources whatsoever. As such, the status previously attached to complex and decorative typefaces is rarely in evidence today.
There is a large focus on etymology present in the opening paragraph of the extract, particularly in reference to the “Latine” and “Greeke” languages; this evidences the importance of classical languages at the time of this text’s publication; Latin and Greek, along with French, were the languages of academia and science, the latter particularly employed by the government and legal system. In the modern world, the language of global government, trade, business and enterprise is English; this is reflected by the fact that English, when including those speaking it as a foreign language, is the most widely-understood language in the world, despite being relatively complex. This has been brought about by a multitude of factors, particularly the eminence of the British Empire, which at its peak, was the largest empire in history and controlled over a quarter of the Earth. The technological, cultural and scientific progress made by English-speaking nations has also contributed significantly towards English becoming the de-facto language of the world. The dominance of the English language is a testament to the cultural, political and linguistic legacy of Britain.
The fact that many words are capitalised, seemingly with little regard for their placement within a sentence or their being proper nouns, reflects another notable element of language change; in the seventeenth century, it was a stylistic convention that text producers would capitalise any words they felt were particularly important; this is in evidence in this text, with words such as “Children”, “Woman”, “Cradle” and “Nurse” being presented in such a way. In modern times, capitalisation is limited to the initial grapheme in a sentence, the initial grapheme in a proper noun, and the first-person singular pronoun I.
Multiple instances of orthographical change are illustrated in text J; “Childe” has now undergone a process of clipping, by which it is truncated as letters are removed: “Child” is now the familiar term. This word has also undergone a process of broadening, by which it has acquired additional semantic denotations; in Old English, “childe” denotes the son of a nobleman; it now denotes any juvenile human of either gender. “Whence” has now also undergone a process of clipping, and now exists as simply “when”. “Munkey” has undergone an orthographical change; this word is now correctly spelt “monkey”. “Gyants” is now typically rendered as “giants”, and “beene” has been clipped to “been”. A great deal of orthographical changes have occurred over the centuries, as the English language has moved away from its inflectional and declensional roots in Germanic and classical languages and modernised.
Text K, an excerpt from an internet encyclopaedia, is very discernable from text J at first sight. Despite both texts being extracts of encyclopaedias and both having the purpose of facilitating education, they have extraordinarily different audiences. Text J is aimed solely at the educated elite, while text K aims to be understandable to all of those interested in the topic, including young children; for this reason, the language employed differs significantly – brevity is embodied by text K, in contrast to the pleonastic text J. Additionally, a scientific approach is taken by text K, providing factual information and statistics, in contrast to text J’s largely mythological content. This reflects the societal shift away from the value of myth and narrative, and towards concrete, proven, factually accurate information.
Immediately apparent in text K also is the presence of photographic graphological illustrations; the development of the camera and modern printing techniques allow books, internet articles and other publications to feature full-colour illustrations that are true-to-life, without need for an artist to illustrate. This is in contrast to the hand-drawn illustration of text J, which gives far less detail to the reader, and is of dubious veracity. Also, in terms of graphology, the typefaces used by the two texts differ substantially; text J favours a traditional serif typeface while text K employs a modern, informal, sans-serif typeface. This is in line with the general shift away from serifed typefaces, which are generally only used within academic, official, legal or otherwise important documentation; the sleeker sans-serif typeface is seen to be more modern, informal and accessible, and as this text is published on the internet, it seeks to embrace the modern and do away with the traditional. It also seems to have a particular focus on a younger demographic, perhaps evidences by its use of bright colours and simple lexis, designed to attract and hold the attention of young readers.
The presence of Latin in text K illustrates that it continues to hold significant status within the academic and scientific community; “Pan paniscus” and “Pan troglodytes” being part of the taxonomical nomenclature of apes. The classical languages have largely fallen out of favour with the general population, and remain generally in only the professions; medicine, law, and high-end academia. Rarely are Latin terms used in everyday social discourse, and those that are still used are generally subject to extreme clipping or abbreviations; for example “id est” is now truncated to “i.e”, and “exempli gratia” to “e.g”. Latin is rarely studied as a language, below university level, outside of the independent school system in the United Kingdom, and as such generally remains mystifying to the general populace, due to its convoluted grammatical structure and archaic lexis.
Evidence of extremely clipped neologisms is present in text K; “1m” refers to “one metre”, a unit of distance that is part of the metric system of measurement, introduced gradually throughout the world from the beginning of the nineteenth century; the same is true of “45 kg”, in reference of “kilograms”. These neologisms are used in concert with the imperial measurements “pounds” and “feet”, which are still the official system of measurement in certain English speaking countries, notably the United States of America, and still widely employed by the general public in the United Kingdom. Clipping is also in evidence with reference to the term “chimp”, a truncation of “chimpanzee”.
Loanwords are present in text K, notably including the classical Greek “alpha”, which denotes first or prime. It is used in this context to refer to the most dominant male, which is also referred to as the “boss”, which is itself is a corruption of the Dutch baas, which denotes a master. This evidences the extent to which the English language has incorporated and assimilated other languages into itself in order to provide additional lexis. This is largely due to the amount of times that England itself has been invaded in ancient times, and the extend to which the hegemonic British Empire colonized parts of the world where other languages were spoken, absorbing their lexical and grammatical distinctiveness and “borrowing” words that provide succinct explanations of certain items, persons or concepts in order to avoid protracted circumlocutory phraseology.
Syntax is very different in these two pieces of data; whilst text J favours continuous flowing prose with many subordinate and coordinating clauses, forming compound and complex sentences, text K employs short and syntactically simple sentences that are related to single subjects. For example, the first line in the main text of the first ape is “Males: 115 pounds (52 kg); up to 4.5 feet (1.4 m) standing”. This seeks to provide factual information in the most concise way possible, eliminating all unnecessary wording. This reinforces the emphasis on the purely factual, and links to keeping the attention of the reader, who is provided with information in a comprehensive and succinct way. The employment of the semicolon illustrates the rise of punctuation, which is utilised widely in modern texts and the rules and conventions of such application are taught in educational establishments from an early age. This contrasts greatly with the historical seventeenth century attitude towards punctuation; that it was something to be generally avoided, largely due to the cost of using additional “plates” (physical items during the printing process) that required additional cost to manufacture, additional time to implement, and additional space on the page to print – these issues are now obsolete, as printing processes are now highly efficient and mechanised, and indeed as this text is published on the World Wide Web, required no ink or equipment to publish, rendering such considerations null.
Evidence of blending, the creation of a new single word from two lexical items, is present in text K; “rainforests” is created by simply conjoining in portmanteau “rain” and “forest” to denote an arboreal environment characterised by a temperate climate and high precipitation. This is itself a neologism.
Word Count: 1,999
I think there are a couple of errors in it - in terms of how I wrote it rather than in relation to accuracy - i kind of rushed it.
Language Change – Question 4
Text J, an excerpt from “The History of Foure-Footed Beastes”, published in 1609, evidences an array of interesting examples of significant language change through the ages, encompassing changes of lexical, graphemic, grammatical, semantical and graphological change.
The first evidence of archaism comes in the very title of the extract itself; multiple archaic graphemic representations of “s” are present, more akin in presentation to a lowercase f than the modern s, having a right-curving ascender and a straight descender. Additionally, in this entitlement, the use of the archaic inflection “es” to denote a plural of “beasts”; this inflection has since been truncated to merely “s”, as society has moved away from the traditional inflection that the prescriptivist movement, those who prescribed the correct and proper use of language, and towards a more simplistic approach in which language is merely studied, and not guided by scholars; this is known as descriptivism. A prescriptivist attitude is followed here largely due to stylistic convention, and also due to the nature of the text; as an encyclopaedia, it is a scholastic text for the facilitation of education, and as only an extrzemely small and privileged section of society could read at the time of this text’s publication (or indeed afford books, due to the lack of an industrialized production process), a highly formal register and traditional style are employed; graphologically, the typeface employed is serifed, conveying a sense of authority and tradition.
The use of the word “beastes” itself evidences language change; whereas the word would be used to refer to any non-human creature at the time of publication, it is now generally used to refer to creatures of an abhorrent aspect; the word has undergone a process of pejoration, and now carries negative status.
An example of neologism can be inferred from the presence of the circumlocutory phrase “foure-footed beastes”; the word “quadrupedal” would now be employed, as language seeks of eschew obfuscation and espouse elucidation. “Quadrupedal” stems from Latin “quad” for four and “ped” for foot; hence, this word would be employed by modern academic documents. This word was “coined”, or created, after the publication of this text, and therefore illustrates how neologisms can be created in order to better appeal to brevity.
A notable graphological element present in text J is that of a hand-drawn illustration of an ape; due to the complete lack of photographic equipment at the time of the creation of this data, the only way in which to incorporate illustrations into text was by creating the image either by memory or by sight, by hand. Modern encyclopaedias, when utilizing images, will almost certainly use photographs. This evidences a way in which technological development has influenced the way in which language and texts are produced. Additionally, a caption, “THE APE”, is supplied, though it is above the image; in modern layouts, one would expect the caption to fall below the image.
Another archaic example of graphological conventions is the presence of an ornate opening grapheme, decorated in calligraphic style. This reflects the expensive nature of the text; much effort is put into the presentation of the book, which would likely be a status symbol among learned men. Such ornamentation is typically eschewed in modern texts, as printing processes have evolved to the point at which persons can publish their own texts cheaply from their own homes, and indeed, with the rise of E-readers and similar technology, publishing works no longer requires any physical resources whatsoever. As such, the status previously attached to complex and decorative typefaces is rarely in evidence today.
There is a large focus on etymology present in the opening paragraph of the extract, particularly in reference to the “Latine” and “Greeke” languages; this evidences the importance of classical languages at the time of this text’s publication; Latin and Greek, along with French, were the languages of academia and science, the latter particularly employed by the government and legal system. In the modern world, the language of global government, trade, business and enterprise is English; this is reflected by the fact that English, when including those speaking it as a foreign language, is the most widely-understood language in the world, despite being relatively complex. This has been brought about by a multitude of factors, particularly the eminence of the British Empire, which at its peak, was the largest empire in history and controlled over a quarter of the Earth. The technological, cultural and scientific progress made by English-speaking nations has also contributed significantly towards English becoming the de-facto language of the world. The dominance of the English language is a testament to the cultural, political and linguistic legacy of Britain.
The fact that many words are capitalised, seemingly with little regard for their placement within a sentence or their being proper nouns, reflects another notable element of language change; in the seventeenth century, it was a stylistic convention that text producers would capitalise any words they felt were particularly important; this is in evidence in this text, with words such as “Children”, “Woman”, “Cradle” and “Nurse” being presented in such a way. In modern times, capitalisation is limited to the initial grapheme in a sentence, the initial grapheme in a proper noun, and the first-person singular pronoun I.
Multiple instances of orthographical change are illustrated in text J; “Childe” has now undergone a process of clipping, by which it is truncated as letters are removed: “Child” is now the familiar term. This word has also undergone a process of broadening, by which it has acquired additional semantic denotations; in Old English, “childe” denotes the son of a nobleman; it now denotes any juvenile human of either gender. “Whence” has now also undergone a process of clipping, and now exists as simply “when”. “Munkey” has undergone an orthographical change; this word is now correctly spelt “monkey”. “Gyants” is now typically rendered as “giants”, and “beene” has been clipped to “been”. A great deal of orthographical changes have occurred over the centuries, as the English language has moved away from its inflectional and declensional roots in Germanic and classical languages and modernised.
Text K, an excerpt from an internet encyclopaedia, is very discernable from text J at first sight. Despite both texts being extracts of encyclopaedias and both having the purpose of facilitating education, they have extraordinarily different audiences. Text J is aimed solely at the educated elite, while text K aims to be understandable to all of those interested in the topic, including young children; for this reason, the language employed differs significantly – brevity is embodied by text K, in contrast to the pleonastic text J. Additionally, a scientific approach is taken by text K, providing factual information and statistics, in contrast to text J’s largely mythological content. This reflects the societal shift away from the value of myth and narrative, and towards concrete, proven, factually accurate information.
Immediately apparent in text K also is the presence of photographic graphological illustrations; the development of the camera and modern printing techniques allow books, internet articles and other publications to feature full-colour illustrations that are true-to-life, without need for an artist to illustrate. This is in contrast to the hand-drawn illustration of text J, which gives far less detail to the reader, and is of dubious veracity. Also, in terms of graphology, the typefaces used by the two texts differ substantially; text J favours a traditional serif typeface while text K employs a modern, informal, sans-serif typeface. This is in line with the general shift away from serifed typefaces, which are generally only used within academic, official, legal or otherwise important documentation; the sleeker sans-serif typeface is seen to be more modern, informal and accessible, and as this text is published on the internet, it seeks to embrace the modern and do away with the traditional. It also seems to have a particular focus on a younger demographic, perhaps evidences by its use of bright colours and simple lexis, designed to attract and hold the attention of young readers.
The presence of Latin in text K illustrates that it continues to hold significant status within the academic and scientific community; “Pan paniscus” and “Pan troglodytes” being part of the taxonomical nomenclature of apes. The classical languages have largely fallen out of favour with the general population, and remain generally in only the professions; medicine, law, and high-end academia. Rarely are Latin terms used in everyday social discourse, and those that are still used are generally subject to extreme clipping or abbreviations; for example “id est” is now truncated to “i.e”, and “exempli gratia” to “e.g”. Latin is rarely studied as a language, below university level, outside of the independent school system in the United Kingdom, and as such generally remains mystifying to the general populace, due to its convoluted grammatical structure and archaic lexis.
Evidence of extremely clipped neologisms is present in text K; “1m” refers to “one metre”, a unit of distance that is part of the metric system of measurement, introduced gradually throughout the world from the beginning of the nineteenth century; the same is true of “45 kg”, in reference of “kilograms”. These neologisms are used in concert with the imperial measurements “pounds” and “feet”, which are still the official system of measurement in certain English speaking countries, notably the United States of America, and still widely employed by the general public in the United Kingdom. Clipping is also in evidence with reference to the term “chimp”, a truncation of “chimpanzee”.
Loanwords are present in text K, notably including the classical Greek “alpha”, which denotes first or prime. It is used in this context to refer to the most dominant male, which is also referred to as the “boss”, which is itself is a corruption of the Dutch baas, which denotes a master. This evidences the extent to which the English language has incorporated and assimilated other languages into itself in order to provide additional lexis. This is largely due to the amount of times that England itself has been invaded in ancient times, and the extend to which the hegemonic British Empire colonized parts of the world where other languages were spoken, absorbing their lexical and grammatical distinctiveness and “borrowing” words that provide succinct explanations of certain items, persons or concepts in order to avoid protracted circumlocutory phraseology.
Syntax is very different in these two pieces of data; whilst text J favours continuous flowing prose with many subordinate and coordinating clauses, forming compound and complex sentences, text K employs short and syntactically simple sentences that are related to single subjects. For example, the first line in the main text of the first ape is “Males: 115 pounds (52 kg); up to 4.5 feet (1.4 m) standing”. This seeks to provide factual information in the most concise way possible, eliminating all unnecessary wording. This reinforces the emphasis on the purely factual, and links to keeping the attention of the reader, who is provided with information in a comprehensive and succinct way. The employment of the semicolon illustrates the rise of punctuation, which is utilised widely in modern texts and the rules and conventions of such application are taught in educational establishments from an early age. This contrasts greatly with the historical seventeenth century attitude towards punctuation; that it was something to be generally avoided, largely due to the cost of using additional “plates” (physical items during the printing process) that required additional cost to manufacture, additional time to implement, and additional space on the page to print – these issues are now obsolete, as printing processes are now highly efficient and mechanised, and indeed as this text is published on the World Wide Web, required no ink or equipment to publish, rendering such considerations null.
Evidence of blending, the creation of a new single word from two lexical items, is present in text K; “rainforests” is created by simply conjoining in portmanteau “rain” and “forest” to denote an arboreal environment characterised by a temperate climate and high precipitation. This is itself a neologism.
Word Count: 1,999
I think there are a couple of errors in it - in terms of how I wrote it rather than in relation to accuracy - i kind of rushed it.
(edited 11 years ago)
Great answer; brings back memories of my english language classes. i got a 'B' for coursework and a 'D' in the exam.
Original post by Abbers
If anyone has top exemplar answers could you please share them over here.
Are you taking the exam tomorrow or in the summer?
Original post by Aspiringlawstudent
Hello! I got 120/120 in the final exam (and 95% overall) for this subject in 2011, so if you have any specific questions please feel free to ask and I will do my best to help.
I assume it's still CLA and language change/development, right?
I assume it's still CLA and language change/development, right?
That's incredible! You wouldn't be able to message me (I'm not sure how you do it) so I could ask you for some advice? It would be a huge help
Thank youwhen was printing industrialised? so that everyone could afford books etc.. i know the caxton press was 1476 but books were still expensive. thanks
(edited 9 years ago)
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