A History of the English Language The history and development of English, from the earliest known writings to its status today as a dominant world language, is a subject of major importance to linguists and historians. In this book, a team of international experts cover the entire recorded history of the English language, outlining its development over fifteen centuries. With an emphasis on more recent periods, every key stage in the history of the language is covered, with full accounts of standardisation, names, the distribution of English in Britain and North America, and its global spread. New historical surveys of the crucial aspects of the language are presented, and historical changes that have affected English are treated as a continuing process, helping to explain the shape of the language today. This complete and up-to-date history of English will be indispensable to all advanced students, scholars and teachers in this prominent field. |
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Contents
| 1 | |
| 9 | |
| 19 | |
| 30 | |
| 43 | |
| 109 | |
| 113 | |
4 Vocabulary | 199 |
a | 231 |
5 Standardisation | 271 |
6 Names | 312 |
7 English in Britain | 352 |
Figure 73 Traditional dialect areas Trudgill 1999b | 372 |
8 English in North America | 384 |
9 English worldwide | 420 |
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Common terms and phrases
adjectives adverbs ÆCHom appears areas bahuvrihi become borrowing Britain British Chaucer clause clitic common compounds construction context Danelaw dative derivation deverbal dialects Dictionary diphthongs distinction early Modern English elements England English language English period example fifteenth French function genitive Germanic grammar grammaticalisation hypocoristics infinitive inflectional instance language late later Latin lexemes lexical items linguistic loans loanwords London marker meaning Middle English midlands modal morphology names native nominal North Northern Cities Shift nouns object occur Old English original passive past participle patterns periphrastic phonological phrase place-names plural position prefixes preposition preposition stranding pronoun pronunciation regional Scandinavian Scots Section semantic seventeenth century singular sixteenth century speakers spelling spoken standard English standardisation stress subjunctive suffix surnames syllable syntactic tense texts typically usage variation varieties verb verbal vocabulary vowel West Saxon word formation þæt
Popular passages
Page 43 - THE history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian — ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.
Page 44 - Ye knowe ek that in forme of speche is chaunge Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so, And spedde as wel in love as men now do; 26 Ek for to wynnen love in sondry ages, In sondry londes, sondry ben usages.
Page 419 - Nebraska NV Nevada NH New Hampshire NJ New Jersey NM New Mexico NY New York NC North Carolina ND North Dakota OH Ohio OK Oklahoma OR Oregon PA Pennsylvania RI Rhode Island SC South Carolina SD...
Page 285 - He improperly imagined, as many others have done, that '' little can be expected" from a modern grammarian, or (as he chose to express it) "from a new compilation, besides a careful selection of the most useful matter, and some degree of improvement in the mode of adapting it to the understanding, and the gradual progress of learners.
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | A History of the English Language |
| Editors | Richard Hogg, David Denison |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, 2008 |
| ISBN | 1139451294, 9781139451291 |
| Subjects | › › Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |