Paper 3 Question 1

Text A is an excerpt from Advice to a Young Man upon first going to Oxford: In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to his Nephew, by Edward Bernes. The text was written in 1832, so it is older English. Since the uncle, Berens, is speaking to his nephew the text would then be written in the first-person point of view. The entire text is structured very thoroughly and is thought through. Beren wrote his text very personally and then, therefore, describes all the feelings he has towards his nephew. He uses phrases such as: “This feeling” “feel for you” and “their home” to create a more descriptive and conversational tone while reading. The uncle wants his nephew to feel exactly how he is. Therefore text a would be more personal.     

In-text a, there is some language and phrases used that are old and outdated. These then include “conceited coxcomb” and “apt.” Conceited coxcomb would then be someone conceited, foolish, and or pretentious. The ‘coxcomb’ is an old English phrase. Meanwhile, apt would be a shortened version of approximately. However, it also includes more modern English phrases like “intimate” to describe a group of close friends or people. The word “intimate” was once used originally spelled ‘intime’ in French. In 1530, it was originally used as “make known friendly.” The theory of lexical gaps is then used here. A word will be invented or used in order to fill a lexical gap in our language. 

In-text B, it is the top five collocates for ‘taste’ and ‘judgment’ from the British National Corpus from the (1980s-to 1993). The chart shows that the “taste” of something goes along with the words bad, good, bitter, first, and personal. Aswell as judgment connects with clinical, professional, dissenting, better, and final. The words used were generated in 1980 and 93 so the terms are fairly new. They are used as newer 21st-century terms and are commonly used in the same way as today. In comparison to text A, the terms coxcomb and apt are used differently these, on the other hand, are not. The words are identical to how they are used on the chart. 

In-text c, it is an n-gram that is used for phrases ‘are apt to be’ ‘are likely to be’ and ‘tend to be’ from (1800-2008). In-text A, the same phrase ‘apt’ is used when talking about young men being guilty. The phrase was used in the old English language and at its peak between the early 1920s to 1940s. However, never really raises that high. The other phrases used also include “likely to be” and “tend to be” which are more modern phrases used today. These two phrases grew more and are more popular than the phrase “apt.”Even though, most people don’t use it and can’t understand it. So the two phrases are more popular among everyone else and easy to understand when using it. 

In old English, the grammar, nouns, and adjectives are much more simple and freer. While in comparison modern English is highly inflected by both verbs and nouns. Therefore, modern English sentences flow better and are easier to comprehend. In text A the sentences are worded more chronologically and structured from beginning to end. They all have punctuation and proper grammar.