4. How is the passive voice formed in English? Is that a true passive in form? Give examples of true passives from other modern tongues. 6 5. How do you explain the his in the expression 'for Jesus Christ his sake?' How do you explain the his in the following and many like passages in the authorised version of the Bible: the fruit-tree bearing fruit after his kind;' 'they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city, which opened to them of his own accord' ? 6. Omitting Latin and Greek, give as many instances as you can of foreign words which, with little or no change of form, have been naturalised in English. Have the words marked in italics in each of these groups of passages any etymological connection with one another? If so, explain it. 8. Correct whatever in the following sentences is ungrammatical, redundant, or indistinct. Add your reason for each alteration :— (a) 'The third and the fifth chapters of 12 Car. II.' The third and fifth chapter.' (b) When you press a watch or pull a clock they answer your question with precision.'-Bolingbroke. (c) 'Mankind never resemble each other so closely as at the beginnings of society.'-Blair. (d) 'Of all the other qualities of style, clearness is the most important.' (e) 'No writing lifts exalted man so high As sacred and soul-moving poesy?' (f) 'An ostentatious, a feeble, or an obscure style are always faults.' (g) 'Never was man so teased or suffered half the uneasiness as I have done to-day.'—Tatler. (h) In style there may be an excess in too many short sentences, by which the sense is split and broken.' 6 (i) What is the cause that nonsense so often escapes being detected both by the writer and the readers?'-Campbell. (k) There is no talent so useful or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of people, and is in common language called discretion.'-Swift. (7) A flowing style is required in all public speakers, guarding at the same time against such a degree of diffusion as renders them tiresome; which will always prove the case when they inculcate too much, and present the same thought under too many different views.' VII. PAPER FOR 1861. ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Examiner: C. KNIGHT WATSON, M.A. 1. State out of what elements the English language has been derived. 2. Did the Roman occupation produce any effect upon the language of this country? 3. Of which of its several elements did the English language principally consist at the following periods? What are the usual designations of the language at those several periods? what are the best known examples of it in the first of the above periods? What in the second? What in the third? What in the fourth ? 4. Reverting to the earliest of these periods, what internal evidence does the language afford (1) of a Keltic element, (2) of a Danish element? In what part of this country was the Danish language chiefly used? 5. Give the etymology of the following words :-basket, chime, by-law, harvest, husband, muggy, penny, ransack, true-love, sky, whim. 6. Have you reason to believe that any words of Danish origin may have been introduced into the language of this country through the NormanFrench? 7. The following passage occurs in a work known as Ingulph's History of Croyland.' The writer is speaking of the results of the Norman Conquest : 'So much did the Normans abhor the very idiom, that the laws of the land and the statutes of the kings of England were set forth in French; the elements of grammar, too, were taught to boys in French and not in English; the English mode of writing, too, was discarded, and the French mode was adopted in charters and in all books.' [p. 71, Oxon. 1684, fol. Ipsum etiam idioma, &c.] How far does the opinion of the best English scholars, as to the language used in this country at that time, coincide with the statement here translated from Ingulph? And on what grounds does that opinion rest? 8. Were the inflected forms of the Anglo-Saxon continued through the 11th and 12th centuries? State your reasons for the answer to this question. 9. Did the use of the French language in this country principally affect the grammar or the vocabulary of the English? State the progress of such change. In what English writer of the 14th century is the change most manifest, and what contemporary writer of that period presents in this respect a marked contrast? 10. What were the three great English dialects in the middle of the 14th century? And in what localities were they spoken? 11. In what manner and at what periods was the I Latin element chiefly introduced into the English language? What are the characteristic terminations of words thus introduced? 12. 'The English language is a dead one.' Explain this remark of Mr. Kemble's. 13. What were the peculiarities of Anglo-Saxon prosody? How early was rhyme introduced into it, and whence was it derived ? 14. Now sith ye han so holy and meek a wife.'-Chaucer. Explain the contracted word in italics, and give illustrations of the like process of contraction, (1) from words in common use, and (2) from the received pronunciation of names of places. 15. (1) 6 'It was he That made the overture of thy treasons to us.' King Lear. (2) After that Timias had again recured How do you scan the first of these passages, and explain the meaning and form of the word in italics in the second? Illustrate the latter by a passage in Milton. 16. Whence comes the l in would, could and should? 17. Derive and conjugate owe. At what period did it lose its anomalous conjugations and take regular inflexions ? 18. Explain the elements which make up pounds thereto, whereto and hereto. 19. Wist ye not that I must be about business?' Parse the word in italics. the com |