Paper-VII
Full Marks-100
Novel
Thomas Hardy : Far from the Madding Crowd
James Joyce : A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
R. K. Narayan : The Guide
Paper-VIII
Full Marks-100
Philology, Phonetics & Modern Grammar
Section-A
History of the English Language
Germanic & the Indo-European family of languages – the Consonant Shift, Grimm’s
Law and Verner’s law
Old English 450-1100 A.D. : Features of O.E. loanwords & the Scandinavian influence.
Middle English 1100-1500 A.D. : The French influence : assimilation, loss of native
words, three-level synonyms – erosion of grammatical gender – decay of inflectional
endings in nouns and adjectives – strong verbs becoming weak.
Renaissance 1500-1650 A.D. : Revival of Learning – rise of nationalism and opposition
to inkhorn terms – the continuing sound changes and the Great Vowel Shift –
reorganization of the personal pronouns.
The Modern Age 1650 onwards : Efforts to set norms for the English language – English
borrows from all sources – influence of science and commerce on present day English –
varieties of English – characteristics of American and Indian English – change of
meaning.
Section-B
The Phonetics of English
The organs of Speech and Speech Mechanism – description and classification of
English vowels and consonants – Phonemic symbols syllable, syllable structure,
Consonant Cluster and word stress – patterns of Intonation – General Indian
English (GIE)
Section-C
The Structure of Modern English
Noun phrase, the Verb Phrase, the verbal : their structures and functions – Determiners,
Articles, Modals and other Auxiliaries, Modifiers and Relationals – Transformation of
sentences – Meaning and Usage.
Section-D
Essay :
Guidelines will be given for each topic, which the student is expected to follow. An essay
should ideally be in the 750 – 850 word range.
