This assignment is just a normal assignment on English Grammar
Microsoft Word - Assignment 1 - Draft.docx Page 1 of 6 Grammar of English — Semester 1, 2020 Assignment 1 (25 points total) • Due by 5.00pm Friday, May 1st. • Assessment submission process: Students must submit their assignments electronically through the online submission portal available on the Assessment Submission page of the subject LMS site. This will act as an electronic receipt of their submission for their records and for the subject coordinator. • Assessment will not be accepted via fax or email. Students are expected to retain a copy of all work submitted for assessment. Happy Easter! This assignment is just a normal assignment on English Grammar – but I thought I’d draw examples from texts about the origin of Easter because they are fascinating. It is a contested area among people interested in faith and history. We have Christians who want Easter to be a wholly Christian festival, Pagans who want Easter to have pre-Christian origins, academics who want to make a name for themselves and then the various denominations of Christianity throwing punches about. Texts To be honest, I don’t think you have to read these to do the assignment. But I’ve included them below in case it helps your analysis. Text 1: This text is interesting because it shows the power etymologies (even if false) can have in public discourse. Alexander Hislop (1843-1900), a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, believed that the Catholic Church was actually a Babylonian mystery cult – whereas his church actually worshipped the true Jesus and true god. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hislop, retrieved 6/4/2020) writes of Hislop: He believed that Roman Catholic religious practices are pagan practices grafted onto true Christianity during the reign of Constantine. At this point, the merger between the Roman state religion and its adoration of the mother and child was transferred to Christianity, merging Christian characters with pagan mythology. The Goddess was renamed Mary, and Jesus was the renamed Jupiter-Puer, or "Jupiter the Boy". Hislop believed that the goddess, in Rome called Venus or Fortuna, was the Roman name of the more ancient Babylonian cult of Ishtar, whose origins began with a blonde-haired and blue-eyed woman named Semiramis. Page 2 of 6 According to Hislop, Semiramis was an exceedingly beautiful woman, who gave birth to a son named Tammuz, was instrumental as the queen, and wife of Nimrod the founder of Babylon, and its religion, complete with a pseudo-Virgin Birth. Later, Nimrod was killed, and Semiramis, pregnant with his child, claimed the child was Nimrod reborn. Hislop attempted to show that the cult and worship of Semiramis spread globally, her name changing with the culture. In Egypt she was Isis, in Greece and Rome she was called Venus, Diana, Athena, and a host of other names, but was always prayed to and central to the faith which was based on Babylonian mystery religion. According to Hislop, Constantine, though claiming to convert to Christianity, remained pagan but renamed the gods and goddesses with Christian names to merge the two faiths for his political advantage. Text 2: Hislop (“The Two Babylons” 1903:103) writes on the etymology of the word “Easter” What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar. Text 3: This is modern work by Professor Carole Cusack from the University of Sydney. She writes all sorts of interesting stuff (including on Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal). The abstract below is from “The Goddess Eostre: Bede’s Text and Contemporary Pagan Tradition(s)” (Cusack 2007) Modern Pagan groups often consult texts from the European Middle Ages and rely upon scholarly assessments of the authenticity of these texts and the traditions they contain. Often these texts become 'scripture' for Pagans and are thus vitally important for identity and community. This applies equally to Traditional and Eclectic Pagans, although they differ in their attitude to the past, the former group engaging in reconstruction where the latter are more flexible and engage in reinvention. This article investigates the sources for a minor Anglo-Saxon goddess, Eostre, best known for bestowing her name on the Christian festival of Easter. Eostre has been chosen precisely because of her obscurity; academic discourses in Anglo-Saxon studies are unable to reach agreement even concerning her existence. In contrast to these cautious, sceptical, 'outsider' voices, the 'insider' voices of the contemporary Pagan community celebrate Eostre and perform rituals in her honour. It is here argued that there is a continuum of interpretations of the Eostre/Ostara material, with scholarly scepticism at one end and Eclectic Pagan reinvention at the other end, while the more historically grounded Traditional Pagan interpretations found in Asatru and some other Northern traditions negotiate a compromise between 'objective' scholarship and 'subjective' faith. Page 3 of 6 Text 4: This is a primary source text from Bede (AD 672-735)– a monk who wrote on the Christianisation of the British peoples. Hrethmonath [the month of March] is named for their goddess Hretha, to whom they sacrificed at this time. Eosturmonath [the month of April] has a name which is now translated ‘Paschal month’, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate the Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance. De Ratione Temporum – “The reckoning of time”, tr. Faith Wallis, Liverpool University Press 1988, pp.53-54 Text 5: This letter from Pope Gregory I is addressed to Abbot Mellitus – asking him to pass on some advice. It describes how to take a long and devious path in converting a people to Christianity. Bede has the only known copy of this letter - and includes it in his work "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation" (731AD). The translation below is from https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/greg1-mellitus.txt Intro: Mellitus was about to join St. Augustine of Canterbury on the mission to England. Gregory I (590-604) recommends a policy of acculturation. Tell Augustine that he should by no means destroy the temples of the gods but rather the idols within those temples. Let him, after he has purified them with holy water, place altars and relics of the saints in them. For, if those temples are well built, they should be converted from the worship of demons to the service of the true God. Thus, seeing that their places of worship are not destroyed, the people will banish error from their hearts and come to places familiar and dear to them in acknowledgement and worship of the true God. Further, since it has been their custom to slaughter oxen in sacrifice, they should receive some solemnity in exchange. Let them therefore, on the day of the dedication of their churches, or on the feast of the martyrs whose relics are preserved in them, build themselves huts around their one-time temples and celebrate the occasion with religious feasting. They will sacrifice and eat the animals not any more as an offering to the devil, but for the glory of God to whom, as the giver of all things, they will give thanks for having been satiated. Thus, if they are not deprived of all exterior joys, they will more easily taste the interior ones. For surely it is impossible to efface all at once everything from their strong minds, just as, when one wishes to reach the top of a mountain, he must climb by stages and step by step, not by leaps and bounds.... Page 4 of 6 Questions 1. (5 points) Determine the word class/part of speech (Noun (pronoun, common noun or proper noun), Verb (lexical verb, modal or primary auxiliary), Adjective, Adverb, Preposition, Determinative, Coordinator, or Subordinator) of each of the bolded words in the following paragraphs drawn from the texts for this assignment. Argue for your analysis by giving at least one piece of syntactic evidence and one piece of morphological evidence (if available) to support your answer. If you use morphological evidence, identify whether the morphological evidence is inflectional or lexical. i. It is not a Christian name. ii. Hislop attempted to show that the cult and worship of Semiramis spread globally, her name changing with the culture. iii. Hislop believed that the goddess, in Rome called Venus or Fortuna, was the Roman name of the more ancient Babylonian cult of Ishtar, whose origins began with a blonde-haired and blue-eyed woman named Semiramis. iv. What means the term Easter itself? v. Anglo-Saxon studies are unable to reach agreement even concerning her existence. vi. Let him, after he has purified them with holy water, place altars and relics of the saints in them. vii. Further, since it has been their custom to slaughter oxen in sacrifice, they should receive some solemnity in exchange. viii. Tell Augustine that he should by no means destroy the temples of the gods but rather the idols within those temples. ix. Eostre has been chosen precisely because of her obscurity x. Bede, a monk who wrote on the Christianisation of the British peoples. 2. (5 points) For each sentence, write down the verbal elements for each clause and classify them according to: present tense, past tense, modal or tenseless. Also determine whether the verbal element also has perfect aspect; progressive aspect; and/or passive voice. For example: I