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Landmarks in the History of the English Language identifies twelve key landmarks spread throughout the language's history to provide a lively and interesting introduction to the history of English.Each landmark focuses on one individual associated with the key moment which helps to engage the reader and provide the history of the language with a ‘human face'. The landmarks range from Alfred the Great and his attempts to further English through its use in education, to the spread of English worldwide and the work of the linguist Braj Kachru. The final chapter takes a look into the future through the writings of David Crystal. Whilst focusing on the specific events and people, the book includes a broad outline of the history of English so that the reader can locate each landmark within the language's history.Written in a student-friendly style and with short activities available online, this book provides a brief introduction for those coming to the topic for the first time, as well an engaging supplementary text for those studying modules on the history of English on degrees in English Language, Linguistics and Literature. General readers with an interest in the English language and its history will also find the book engaging.

Religious texts played a central role in Early English, and this innovative book looks in particular at how medieval Christians used prayers and psalms in healing the sick. At first glance, the variety and multiplicity of utterances, prayers, exorcistic formulas, and other incantations found in a single charm may seem to be random and eclectic. However, this book shows that charms had distinct, logical linguistic characteristics, as well performative aspects that were shaped by their usage and cultural significance. Together, these qualities gave the texts a unique role in the early development of English, in particular its use in ritual and folklore. Arnovick identifies four forms of incantations and a full chapter is devoted to each form, arranged to reflect the lived experiences of medieval Christians, from their baptism in infancy, to daily prayer and attendance at Church celebrations, and to their Confession and anointing during grave illness.

The History of English: An Introduction provides a chronological analysis of the linguistic, social, and cultural development of the English language from before its establishment in Britain around the year 450 to the present. Each chapter represents a new stage in the evolution of the language, all illustrated with a rich and diverse selection of primary texts. The book also explores the wider global course of the language, including a historical review of English in its pidgin and creole varieties and as a native and/or second language in the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Australasia.The third edition, carefully revised and updated throughout, includes:● chapter introductions and conclusions to assist in orientation plus additional marginal references throughout;● the addition of 21 timelines often running from Old English to Present-Day English and focusing on a variety of features;● a new focus on the relevance of change for and in Present-Day English;● discussions on the role and image of women, the (in-)visibility of social classes, and regional variation in English;● material on bilingualism, code-switching, and borrowing, and on the effects of the social media on language use;● over 90 textual examples demonstrating linguistic change and over 100 figures, tables, and maps, including 31 colour images, to support and illuminate the text;● updated online support material including brief introductions to Old and to Middle English, further articles on linguistic, historical, and cultural phenomena which go beyond the scope of the book, additional sample texts, exercises, and audio clips.With study questions as well as recommendations for further reading and topics for further study, The History of English is essential reading for any student of the English language and will be of relevance to any course addressing the origins and development of the English language.

This book offers the first book-length treatment of the diachronic study of English exclamatives, tracing their development from 1500 through to the twenty-first century.The volume shines a light on independent wh-exclamatives in the history of English. In particular, Schröder calls attention to the development of three prototypical wh-exclamatives as observed in three newly created genre-balance corpora comprising prose fiction, dialogues, and personal correspondence, uncovering new insights into the differences in their evolution. In its analysis of English exclamatives over time and broader exploration of the impact of genre on constructional productivity, the book raises key questions about existing claims in scholarship on Diachronic Construction Grammar and outlines ways forward for new areas of inquiry. This volume will appeal to scholars interested in diachronic linguistics, historical syntax, language variation and change, and the history of English.

English is now a global phenomenon no longer defined by fixed territorial, cultural and social functions. The Routledge Companion to English Studies provides an overview of this dynamic field of study, with this new edition focusing on English from an applied language perspective and taking account of interdisciplinary and decolonizing viewpoints. This companion considers historical trajectories while also showcasing state-of-the-art contributions by established scholars from around the world.The Routledge Companion to English Studies: provides a broad view of English as a subject of study and research through language-centred disciplines investigates the use of English (and language more broadly) in contemporary communication practices, taking into account the use of technology explores the role of English in education and in society from social and global perspectives highlights the importance of the link between English and other languages within the concepts of flexible multilingualism and translanguaging offers a view on the need for extending and deepening the concerns of English studies as a field of scholarly enquiry This collection of thirty-one commissioned chapters provides a contemporary picture of the diverse field of English studies and is an expert-informed text for advanced students and researchers in this field.

This essential new text provides a comprehensive, modern account of how the English language originated, developed, changed, and continues to morph into new forms in contemporary society. Introducing the History of the English Language first offers a rigorous, approachable introduction to the building blocks of language itself and then traces English language usage's messy development in society, beginning with its origins in the Indo-European language family and continuing chronologically through the Old, Middle, Modern, and present-day forms.Seth Lerer deftly tells this story not as a tale of standards and authority but of differences and diversity. He draws on public and private literary sources from different regions and those in different social classes, highlighting sources from women and people of color – and introduces readers to the effects of technology on English, and the politics of dialect and racial, gender, regional, and class identity across these periods. Further, this text extensively addresses the rich diversity of English varieties, with innovative, focused chapters dedicated to American English, African American English, Global English, and Virtual English.Requiring no prior knowledge of language history or linguistics, offering an array of supplemental activities as online support material, and taking a socially motivated approach to pedagogy that seeks to generate productive reflection and discussion about language difference and politics, this book enables and encourages the twenty-first century student in the United States to see their own language use as deeply implicated in power dynamics and social relationships.

The third edition of this successful textbook has been fully revised and updated.Essentials of Early English is a practical and highly accessible introduction to the early stages of the English language: Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English.Designed specifically as a handbook for students beginning the study of Early English language, whether for linguistic or literary purposes, it presumes little or no prior knowledge of the history of English.Features of this new edition include: Comprehensive updating of the contents to take account of new developments in the subject Newly added sample texts and accompanying notes Links to images of many of the illustrative texts An updated annotated bibliography. A contextual introduction of the history of English is provided, which includes an outline of English in relation to its origins. A deeper analysis is then given on each of the key stages of Early English, using the language of King Alfred, Chaucer, and Shakespeare respectively to illustrate points. Thus, the essential characteristics of each stage of the language are provided to create the ideal course book for History of English courses and to give the student a firm foundation of basic linguistic knowledge which can be applied to further study.

This pioneering work explores epigraphic evidence for the development of English before the Anglo-Saxon period, bringing together linguistic, historical and archaeological perspectives on early inscriptions, making them more accessible to a wider audience.The volume offers a new account of the Germanic development of Anglo-Saxon England, beginning with an examination of the earliest inscriptions from northern Europe and the oldest inscriptions preserving Germanic names, many of which have only been discovered since the 1980s. The book charts the origins of key terms such as Angle, Saxon and Jute and early writing systems used by Germanic peoples. Drawing on epigraphic evidence from northwestern Germany through to southwestern Denmark and sub-Roman Britain, Mees situates the analysis within historical and linguistic frameworks but also provides archaeological contextualisations, assessed chronologically, for the inscriptions. Taken together, the work re-examines existing models of the early development of English through the lens of contemporary approaches, opening paths for new directions in research on historical dialectology.This book is key reading for students and scholars interested in the history of English and historical linguistics.

A riveting, one-of-a-kind anthology of the diversity, strangeness, and power of American English that features a tremendous array of letters, poems, memoir, jeremiads, stories, songs, documents, and more from Sojourner Truth and Abraham Lincoln to Henry Roth and Zora Neale Hurston, from George Carlin and James Baldwin to Richard Rodríguez and Amy Tan, from Tony Kushner and Toni Morrison to Louise Erdrich and Donald Trump.This volume is a kind of people's history of English in the United States, told by those who have transformed it: activists, teachers, immigrants, journalists, nurses, poets, astronauts, dictionary makers, actors, musicians, playwrights, preachers, Supreme Court Justices, rappers, translators, singers, children's book authors, scientists, politicians, foreigners, students, homemakers, lexicographers, scholars, newspaper columnists, TV personalities, senators, novelists, technology innovators, and a bunch of fanatics.The quest is to understand how an imperial language like English, with Germanic origins, whose spread resulted from the Norman conquest, came to be an intrinsic component of the first and most influential democratic experiment in the world. Edited by internationally renowned cultural commentator and consultant for the OED Ilan Stavans, it is organized chronologically and offers a banquet of letters, poems, autobiographical reflections, op-eds, dictionary entries, stories, songs, legislative documents, and other evidence of verbal mutation. It addresses Ebonics, and Yinglish, Spanglish, and other linguistic concoctions, including sci-fi inventions.In pages in which the story is not only the what but the how, The People's Tongue starts with samples of the English used by the settlers in Plymouth Colony and it ends with President Donald Trump's tweets.

The fact that English has always borrowed heavily from other languages is well known. However, the systemic long-term effects of the processes involved in such contacts are under-researched. This collection of articles takes a more wide-spanning approach, looking at various periods and phenomena across the centuries. The volume focusses on language contact seen as cultural contact, especially with Scandinavia and France, as well as on specific text types from times ranging from Old English to the twentieth century.The volume aims at advancing insight on the ways in which contacts with other languages and cultures influenced the English language as a whole. The book provides new reflections on borrowing and lexical innovation as cultural choices bound to different textual traditions.

This textbook approaches the history of English from a theoretical perspective. The book provides a brief chronological overview describing the way in which the English language has changed over time from Old English to Modern English, while subsequent parts adopt a theoretical focus that is thematically organised to deal with the question of how and why English changed in the way it did, including a part addressing some specific contact-induced changes and key topics such as English as a Lingua Franca. Supported throughout with information boxes with empirical studies, the examples given are all drawn from English, but boxes with examples from other languages tie the development of the English language into changes in other contexts and settings. This book is an ideal resource for undergraduate students of the English Language and historical linguistics.

Where does today's English language come from? This book takes its readers on a journey back in time, from present-day varieties to the Old English of Beowulf and beyond. Written for students with little or no background in linguistics, and reflecting the latest scholarship, it showcases the variation and change present throughout the history of English, and includes numerous exercises and sample texts for every period. The reverse-chronological approach taken by this book sets it apart from all existing textbooks of the last fifty years. Innovative features also include its focus on variation, multilingualism and language contact, its use of texts from outside the literary canon, and its inclusion of case studies from syntax, sociophonetics and historical pragmatics.

Any history of English starts with the evidence its narrators select, the historical periods they focus on, and the guiding principles and frameworks they adopt. Even slightly different choices lead to significantly different narratives. English Begins at Jamestown investigates the factors behind these choices and the effects they have on our understanding of the English language and its history. Tim Machan explores how people tell and have told the story of English, from its Indo-European origins to its present-day status as a global language. He describes how narrative principles are constructed, what kinds of facts and analyses they allow or prevent, and what can be known outside of them. The book's historically and critically wide-ranging arguments center on the themes of social purpose, aesthetics, periodization, and grammatical structure, while the conclusion extends the discussion into the roles of speakers themselves, who have transformed the grammar and pragmatics of English since the colonial period embodied in the Jamestown settlement. English Begins at Jamestown shows that there are better, worse, and wrong ways to narrate the language's history, even if there cannot necessarily be one correct way.

A New Literary History of the Long Twelfth Century offers a new narrative of what happened to English language writing in the long twelfth century, the period that saw the end of the Old English tradition and the beginning of Middle English writing. It discusses numerous neglected or unknown texts, focusing particularly on documents, chronicles and sermons. To tell the story of this pivotal period, it adopts approaches from both literary criticism and historical linguistics, finding a synthesis for them in a twenty-first century philology. It develops new methodologies for addressing major questions about twelfth-century texts, including when they were written, how they were read and their relationship to earlier works. Essential reading for anyone interested in what happened to English after the Norman Conquest, this study lays the groundwork for the coming decade's work on transitional English.

Variation in Time and Space: Observing the World through Corpora is a collection of articles that address the theme of linguistic variation in English in its broadest sense. Current research in English language presented in the book explores a fascinating number of topics, whose unifying element is the corpus linguistic methodology. Part I of this volume, Meaning in Time and Space, introduces the two dimensions of variation – time and space – relating them to the negotiation of meaning in discourse and questions of intertextuality. Part II, Variation in Time, approaches the English language from a diachronic point of view; the time periods covered vary considerably, ranging from 16th century up to present-day; so do the genres explored. Part III, Variation in Space, focuses on global varieties of English and includes a contrastive point of view. The range of topics is again broad – from specific lexico-grammatical structures to the variation in academic English, combining the regional and genre dimensions of variation. This is a timely volume that shows the breadth and depth in current corpus-based research of English.

The History of Late Modern Englishes provides an accessible and student-friendly introduction to the history of the English language from the beginning of the eighteenth century up until the present day. Taking an activity-based approach, this text ensures that students learn by engaging with the fascinating evolution of this language rather than by simply reading about it.The History of Late Modern Englishes:• Covers the development of Englishes around the world, not only in the British Isles, but also in the United States, Canada, India, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Melanesia, as well as in other countries around the world where English is used as a lingua franca;• Accommodates the needs of both native and non-native speakers of English, with helpful features such as a glossary of key terms and questions to guide the reader through the book;• Includes activity sections and discussion points to help students engage with the text;• Is accompanied by e-resources which include further activities and additional coverage of points of interest in the book.Written by an experienced teacher and author, this book is an essential course textbook for any module on the history of English and the perfect accompaniment to the author's own The History of Early English.

This volume collects essays that approach notions of creating, maintaining, and crossing boundaries in the history of the English language. The concept of boundaries is variously defined within linguistics depending on the theoretical framework, from formal and theoretical perspectives to specific fields and more empirical, physical, and perceptual angles. The contributions to this volume do not take one particular theoretical or methodological approach but, instead, explore how examining various types of boundaries—linguistic, conceptual, analytical, generic, physical—helps us illuminate and account for historical use, variation, and change in English. In their exploration of various topics in the history of English, contributions ask a range of questions: what does it mean to set up boundaries between time periods? When do language varieties have distinct boundaries and when do they overlap? Where do language users draw up clausal, constructional, semantic, phonetic/phonological boundaries? Thus, the chapters explore not only how boundaries illustrate synchronic and diachronic features in the history of the English language but also what we can discover by questioning perceived or actual boundaries.

This volume traces the multifaceted concept of manners in the history of English from the late medieval through the early and late modern periods right up to the present day. It focuses in particular on transgressions of manners and norms of behaviour as an analytical tool to shed light on the discourse of polite conduct and styles of writing. The papers collected in this volume adopt both literary and linguistic perspectives. The fictional sources range from medieval romances and Shakespearean plays to eighteenth-century drama, Lewis Carroll's Alice books and present-day television comedy drama. The non-fictional data includes conduct books, medical debates and petitions written by lower class women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The contributions focus in particular on the following questions: What are the social and political ideologies behind rules of etiquette and norms of interaction, and what can we learn from blunders and other transgressions?

Did you know that the word salary comes from the Latin sal for'salt', since part of the payment to Roman soldiers was in salt? That braces and suspenders used to refer to different items of clothing? Or that trolls have migrated from fairytales to online discussion forums? The English language is currently going through a period of tremendous ferment, growth and expansion. Old'rules'are being challenged, or weakened. New ones are emerging. And mistakes and misuses are popping up with all the speed that the internet can provide. For over two decades, linguist Roly Sussex has documented the nature and evolution of the English Language on his popular weekly ABC Radio program'Word for Today'. For the first time, the best of these reflections on word origins, neologisms and misuses are collected in this witty and insightful book. With Word for Today, you'll always have a word for tomorrow.

This volume explores the complex relations of texts and their contextualising elements, drawing particularly on the notions of paratext, metadiscourse and framing. It aims at developing a more comprehensive historical understanding of these phenomena, covering a wide time span, from Old English to the 20th century, in a range of historical genres and contexts of text production, mediation and consumption. However, more fundamentally, it also seeks to expand our conception of text and the communicative ‘spaces'surrounding them, and probe the explanatory potential of the concepts under investigation. Though essentially rooted in historical linguistics and philology, the twelve contributions of this volume are also open to insights from other disciplines (such as medieval manuscript studies and bibliography, but also information studies, marketing studies, and even digital electronics), and thus tackle opportunities and challenges in researching the dynamics of text and framing phenomena in a historical perspective.

Textbooks inform readers that the precursor of Standard English was supposedly an East or Central Midlands variety which became adopted in London; that monolingual fifteenth century English manuscripts fall into internally-cohesive Types; and that the fourth Type, dating after 1435 and labelled ‘Chancery Standard', provided the mechanism by which this supposedly Midlands variety spread out from London. This set of explanations is challenged by taking a multilingual perspective, examining Anglo-Norman French, Medieval Latin and mixed-language contexts as well as monolingual English ones. By analysing local and legal documents, mercantile accounts, personal letters and journals, medical and religious prose, multiply-copied works, and the output of individual scribes, standardisation is shown to have been preceded by supralocalisation rather than imposed top-down as a single entity by governmental authority. Linguistic features examined include syntax, morphology, vocabulary, spelling, letter-graphs, abbreviations and suspensions, social context and discourse norms, pragmatics, registers, text-types, communities of practice social networks, and the multilingual backdrop, which was influenced by shifting socioeconomic trends.

Transforming Early English shows how historical pragmatics can offer a powerful explanatory framework for the changes medieval English and Older Scots texts undergo, as they are transmitted over time and space. The book argues that formal features such as spelling, script and font, and punctuation - often neglected in critical engagement with past texts - relate closely to dynamic, shifting socio-cultural processes, imperatives and functions. This theme is illustrated through numerous case-studies in textual recuperation, ranging from the reinvention of Old English poetry and prose in the later medieval and early modern periods, to the eighteenth-century'vernacular revival'of literature in Older Scots.

This fully updated edition of Redesigning English explores the innovative uses of English from early manuscripts to post-colonial literature, creative writing and developments in new media. Focusing on how English has, and continues to evolve through its global status, there is a strong emphasis on the visual forms of language and communication, and on issues of identity and politics. New chapters for this edition include; what makes English into Art? A tongue for sighing, English manuscripts: the emergence of a visual identity, English in a globalized world.

Routledge English Language Introductions cover core areas of language study and are one-stop resources for students.Assuming no prior knowledge, books in the series offer an accessible overview of the subject, with activities, study questions, sample analyses, commentaries and key readings – all in the same volume. The innovative and flexible ‘two-dimensional'structure is built around four sections – introduction, development, exploration and extension – which offer self-contained stages for study. Each topic can also be read across these sections, enabling the reader to build gradually on the knowledge gained. This revised second edition of History of English includes:❑ a comprehensive introduction to the history of English covering the origins of English, the change from Old to Middle English, and the influence of other languages on English;❑ increased coverage of key issues, such as the standardisation of English;❑ a wider range of activities, plus answers to exercises;❑ new readings of well-known authors such as Manfred Krug, Colette Moore, Merja Stenroos and David Crystal;❑ a timeline of important external events in the history of English.Structured to reflect the chronological development of the English language, History of English describes and explains the changes in the language over a span of 1,500 years, covering all aspects from phonology and grammar, to register and discourse. In doing so, it incorporates examples from a wide variety of texts and provides an interactive and structured textbook that will be essential reading for all students of English language and linguistics.

This volume brings together contributions tracing the complex paths of change taken by the English language in its long history, from its beginnings in Old English to the present day. It addresses issues in a variety of fields ranging from semantics and morphosyntax to the interface between syntax and phonology, using a number of different theoretical standpoints. As such, the text reflects a diversity of approaches to corpora, and will serve to improve the reader's understanding of some of the many developments and alterations that have affected English. It will be of interest to all scholars and students working on the history of English, as well as students of historical linguistics in general.

The present volume brings together leading scholars studying language change from a variety of sociolinguistic perspectives, complementing and enriching the existing literature by providing readers with a kaleidoscopic perspective of aspects of change in English from around 1700 until the present day. The volume presents a collection of in-depth studies on a broad spectrum of phonetic, lexical, grammatical and discourse variation, drawing on historical corpora, dictionaries, metalinguistic commentary, ego-documents, spoken language and survey data.Apart from advancing our knowledge of processes of language change in varieties of English, including British English, Irish English, Australian English, South African English, American English and Canadian English, the individual chapters contribute to the theoretical debates on variation and change in Late Modern as well as Present-day English.

The History of English: An Introduction provides a chronological analysis of the linguistic, social, and cultural development of the English language from before its establishment in Britain around the year 450 to the present. Each chapter represents a new stage in the development of the language from Old English through Middle English to Modern Global English, all illustrated with a rich and diverse selection of primary texts showing changes in language resulting from contact, conquest and domination, and the expansion of English around the world.The History of English goes beyond the usual focus on English in the UK and the USA to include the wider global course of the language during and following the Early Modern English period. This perspective therefore also includes a historical review of English in its pidgin and creole varieties and as a native and/or second language in the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Australasia.This new edition of The History of English has been thoroughly revised and updated throughout, and features: chapter introductions and conclusions to assist in orientation; over 90 textual examples demonstrating linguistic change accompanied, as necessary, by translations and/or glosses; study questions on the social, cultural, and linguistic background of the periods and topics, as well as recommendations for further reading and topics for further study; over 100 figures, tables and maps to support and illuminate the text; 18 pages of colour plates depicting exemplary texts, relevant artifacts, and examples of language usage, including Germanic runes, the opening page of Beowulf, the New England Primer, and the Treaty of Waitangi; a brand-new companion website hosting further articles on linguistic, historical, and cultural phenomena which go beyond the scope of the book, additional sample texts, exercises, and audio clips. The History of English is essential reading for any student of the English language, and will be of relevance to any course addressing the origins of the English language.

Alisoun Sings finds its starting-point with Chaucer's iconic, proto-feminist Wife of Bath. Her forceful voice leads the way across narratives of genders, and addresses the brutality of social conventions with caustic humor. This labyrinthine text navigates love and protest in landscapes impacted by global warming, systemic violence and solar eclipses. Bergvall continues her previous work creating texts that rest on transhistoric forms of English, beyond its dominance as a global lingua franca, and places her quest in the intersections and migrations of stories and languages.

Texts of the past were often not monolingual but were produced by and for people with bi- or multilingual repertoires; the communicative practices witnessed in them therefore reflect ongoing and earlier language contact situations. However, textbooks and earlier research tend to display a monolingual bias. This collected volume on multilingual practices in historical materials, including code-switching, highlights the importance of a multilingual approach. The authors explore multilingualism in hitherto neglected genres, periods and areas, introduce new methods of locating and analysing multiple languages in various sources, and review terminology, theories and tools. The studies also revisit some of the issues already introduced in previous research, such as Latin interacting with European vernaculars and the complex relationship between code-switching and lexical borrowing. Collectively, the contributors show that multilingual practices share many of the same features regardless of time and place, and that one way or the other, all historical texts are multilingual. This book takes the next step in historical multilingualism studies by establishing the relevance of the multilingual approach to understanding language history.

The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies provides a comprehensive overview of English Language Studies. The book takes a three-pronged approach to examine what constitutes the phenomenon of the English language; why and in what contexts it is an important subject to study; and what the chief methodologies are that are used to study it. In 30 chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, this Handbook covers and critically examines: English Language Studies as a discipline that is changing and evolving in response to local and global pressures; definitions of English, including world Englishes, contact Englishes, and historical and colonial perspectives; the relevance of English in areas such as teaching, politics and the media; analysis of English situated in wider linguistics contexts, including psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic ethnography. The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies is essential reading for researchers and students working in fields related to the teaching and study of the English language in any context.

CHOSEN BY THE ECONOMIST AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEARAn American linguist teaching in England explores the sibling rivalry between British and American English “English accents are the sexiest.” “Americans have ruined the English language.” Such claims about the English language are often repeated but rarely examined. Professor Lynne Murphy is on the linguistic front line. In The Prodigal Tongue she explores the fiction and reality of the special relationship between British and American English. By examining the causes and symptoms of American Verbal Inferiority Complex and its flipside, British Verbal Superiority Complex, Murphy unravels the prejudices, stereotypes and insecurities that shape our attitudes to our own language. With great humo(u)r and new insights, Lynne Murphy looks at the social, political and linguistic forces that have driven American and British English in different directions: how Americans got from centre to center, why British accents are growing away from American ones, and what different things we mean when we say estate, frown, or middle class. Is anyone winning this war of the words? Will Yanks and Brits ever really understand each other?

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the history of English, organized by linguistic level, and it explores key questions and debates. Individual chapters are written by recognized experts in the field. The volume begins with a re-evaluation of the concept of periodization in the history of English. This is followed by overviews of changes in the traditional areas of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics as well as chapters covering areas less often treated in histories of English, including prosody, idioms and fixed expressions, pragmatics and discourse, onomastics, orthography, style/register/text types, and standardization.

This volume is one of the first detailed expositions of the history of different varieties of English. It explores language variation and varieties of English from an historical perspective, covering theoretical topics such as diffusion and supraregionalization as well as concrete descriptions of the internal and external historical developments of more than a dozen varieties of English including American English, African American Vernacular English, Received Pronunciation, Estuary English, and English in Canada, Africa, India, Wales, among many others.

This volume provides a comprehensive account of Early Modern English, organized by linguistic level. In seventeen individual chapters, written by recognized experts in the field, this volume not only presents detailed outlines of the traditional language levels, such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. It also explores key questions and debates, such as do-periphrasis, the Great Vowel Shift, pronouns and relativization, literary language (including the language of Shakespeare), and sociolinguistics, including contact and standardization.

Bringing together experts from both historical linguistics and psychology, this volume addresses core factors in language change from the perspectives of both fields. It explores the potential (and limitations) of such an interdisciplinary approach, covering the following factors: frequency, salience, chunking, priming, analogy, ambiguity and acquisition. Easily accessible, the book features chapters by psycholinguists presenting cutting edge research on core factors and processes and develops a model of how this may be involved in language change. Each chapter is complemented with one or several case study in the history of the English language in which the psycholinguistic factor in question may be argued to have played a decisive role. Thus, for the first time, a single volume provides a platform for an integrated exchange between psycholinguistics and historical linguistics on the question of how language changes over time.

This collection of eleven essays traces the complex paths of change taken by the English language in its long history, from its Indo-European origins to the present day. Just like any other language, English is a complex system made up of several interconnected sub-systems – lexical, syntactical, phonological, morphological – and all of those sub-systems are subject to change, resulting in constant shifts and readjustments. Additionally, more than some other languages, English has a history marked by strong upheavals, particularly with the influence of Scandinavian and Romance languages in the Middle Ages. The contributions here consider all aspects of that complex history, with four of them taking a particular interest in the issues brought about by language contact with French and Latin.

Binomials, such as for and against, dead or alive, to have and to hold, can be broadly defined as two words belonging to the same grammatical category and linked by a semantic relationship. They are an important phraseological phenomenon present throughout the history of the English language. This volume offers a range of studies on binomials, their types and functions from Old English through to the present day. Searching for motivations and characteristic features of binomials in a particular genre or writer, the chapters engage with many linguistic levels of analysis, such as phonology or semantics, and explore the important role of translation. Drawing on philological and corpus-linguistic approaches, the authors employ qualitative and quantitative methods, setting the discussion firmly in the extra-linguistic context. Binomials and their extended forms - multinomials - emerge from these discussions as an important phraseological tool, with rich applications and complex motivations.

The Routledge History of Literature in English covers the main developments in the history of British and Irish literature, with accompanying language notes which explore the interrelationships between language and literature at each stage. With a span from AD 600 to the present day, it emphasises the growth of literary writing, its traditions, conventions and changing characteristics, and includes literature from the margins, both geographical and cultural. Extensive quotations from poetry, prose and drama underpin the narrative.The third edition covers recent developments in literary and cultural theory, and features: a new chapter on novels, drama and poetry in the 21st century; examples of analysis of key texts drawn from across the history of British and Irish literature, including material from Chaucer, Shakespeare, John Keats and Virginia Woolf; an extensive companion website including extra language notes and key text analysis; lists of Booker, Costa and Nobel literature prize winners; and an A-Z of authors and topics. The Routledge History of Literature in English is an invaluable reference for any student of English literature and language.

In this fascinating study, Geoffrey Russom traces the evolution of the major English poetic traditions by reference to the evolution of the English language, and considers how verse forms are born, how they evolve, and why they die. Using a general theory of poetic form employing universal principles rooted in the human language faculty, Russom argues that certain kinds of poetry tend to arise spontaneously in languages with identifiable characteristics. Language changes may require modification of metrical rules and may eventually lead to extinction of a meter. Russom's theory is applied to explain the development of English meters from the earliest alliterative poems in Old and Middle English and the transition to iambic meter in the Modern English period. This thorough yet accessible study provides detailed analyses of form in key poems, including Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and a glossary of technical terms.

This book describes the earliest reconstructable stages of the prehistory of English, focusing specifically on linguistic structure. It outlines the grammar of Proto-Indo-European, considers the changes by which one dialect of that prehistoric language developed into Proto-Germanic, and provides a detailed account of the grammar of Proto-Germanic. In the course of his exposition Don Ringe draws on a long tradition of work on many languages, including Hittite, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Slavic, Gothic, and Old Norse. This second edition has been significantly revised to provide a more in-depth account of Proto-Indo-European, with further exploration of disputed points; it has also been updated to include new developments in the field, particularly in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European verb and nominal inflection. The author also reconsiders some of his original approaches to specific linguistic changes and their relative chronology based on his recent research. This new edition of the first volume in A Linguistic History of English will be of central interest to all scholars and students of comparative Indo-European and Germanic linguistics, the history of English, and historical linguistics more generally. The second volume, The Development of Old English by Don Ringe and Ann Taylor, was published by OUP in 2014 (paperback 2016)

The History of the English Language has been a standard university course offering for over 150 years. Yet relatively little has been written about teaching a course whose very title suggests its prodigious chronological, geographic, and disciplinary scope. In the nineteenth century, History of the English Language courses focused on canonical British literary works. Since these early curricula were formed, the English language has changed, and so have the courses. In the twenty-first century, instructors account for the growing prominence of World Englishes as well as the English language's transformative relationship with the internet and social media. Approaches to Teaching the History of the English Language addresses the challenges and circumstances that the course's instructors and students commonly face. The volume reads as a series of'master classes'taught by experienced instructors who explain the pedagogical problems that inspired resourceful teaching practices. Although its chapters are authored by seasoned teachers, many of whom are preeminent scholars in their individual fields, the book is designed for instructors at any career stage-beginners and veterans alike. The topics addressed in Approaches to Teaching the History of the English Language include: the unique pedagogical dynamic that transpires in language study; the course's origins and relevance to current university curricula; scholarly approaches that can offer an abiding focus in a semester-long course; advice about navigating the course's formidable chronological ambit; ways to account for the language's many varieties; and the course's substantial and pedagogical relationship to contemporary multimedia platforms. Each chapter balances theory and practice, explaining in detail activities, assignments, or discussion questions ready for immediate use by instructors.

The author researches selected synonyms of ‘skinny'and ‘fatty'in the history of the English language from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The method employed in grouping the analytical material has been dictated by the nature of the processes of semantic change. The author subdivided the quantum of the analysed lexical items into the following type-groups: zoosemy (animal metaphor), foodsemy (food metaphor), plantosemy (plant metaphor), metonymy, reification, eponymy, onomatopoeia, rhyming slang and varia. Surveying a collection of English dictionaries the author makes an attempt to determine the status of a given synonym in present-day English.

To some extent, everyone plays with language and uses it as a form of recreation as well as a means of communication. Recognizing that the creation of true wit is a subjective endeavour, Richler suggests that the commission of language wit occurs not only wittingly, but also unwittingly and sometimes even half-wittedly. When we consciously manipulate language for the purpose of wit, Richler designates this process “arranged wit,” and because sometimes the humour seemingly emanates from the mind of a nitwit rather than a wit, Richler designates this “deranged wit.” Moreover, what appears to be deranged can actually be artfully arranged, or as Polonius might say, there is much method to the madness. Join Richler in Wordplay as he highlights the most whimsical English language writers throughout the ages and analyzes what constitutes both arranged and deranged wit. Prepare for chuckles aplenty, and even belly laughs.

Linguistics and Literary History systematically explores the advantages of an inter-disciplinary approach within the broad area of English studies. It brings together stylistics, literary theory and diachronic linguistics in order to explore their interaction at various methodological, descriptive and interpretative levels. This unique combination makes this volume on historical stylistics an important work for international scholars and postgraduate students working on the interface between literary history and language change, both from corpus-based and qualitative perspectives. The chapters written by leading scholars in these various fields are an appropriate reference work for teaching and research purposes in the areas of stylistics, historical linguistics, English language and literature, corpus linguistics and literary history.

英語にまつわる素朴な疑問に答える形で、英語の歴史をひもといていく、これまでになかった英語史の入門書。「なぜnameは『ナメ』ではなく『ネイム』と発音されるのか？」「なぜ -ly をつけると副詞になるのか？」「アメリカ英語はイギリス英語よりも『新しい』のか？」といった疑問をきっかけに、英語史の基礎知識を学んでいくことができる。英語という言語について深く学んでいくために最適な1冊。

The History of Early English provides an accessible and student-friendly introduction to the history of the English language from its beginnings until the end of the Early Modern English period. Taking an activity-based approach, this text ensures that students learn by engaging with the fascinating evolution of this language rather than simply reading about it. The History of Early English: Provides a comprehensive introduction to early, middle and early modern English; Introduces each language period with a text from writers such as Chaucer and Shakespeare, accompanied by a series of guiding questions and commentaries that will engage readers and give them a flavour of the language of the time; Features a range of activities that include discussion points, questions, online tasks and preparatory activities that seamlessly take the reader from one chapter to the next; Is supported by a companion website featuring audio files, further activities and links to online material. Written by an experienced teacher and author, this book is the essential course textbook for any module on the history of English.

The English Language is spoken by more than a billion people throughout the world. But where did English come from? And how has it evolved into the language used today? In How English Became English Simon Horobin investigates the evolution of the English language, examining how the language continues to adapt even today, as English continues to find new speakers and new uses. Engaging with contemporary concerns about correctness, Horobin considers whether such changes are improvements, or evidence of slipping standards. What is the future for the English Language? Will Standard English continue to hold sway, or are we witnessing its replacement by newly emerging Englishes?

This book looks at how historical linguists accommodate the written records used for evidence. The limitations of the written record restrict our view of the past and the conclusions that we can draw about its language. However, the same limitations force us to be aware of the particularities of language. This collection blends the philological with the linguistic, combining questions of the particular with generalizations about language change.