The History of English
This new series occupies a middle ground between textbooks on the history of English, typically addressed to the undergraduate student, and handbooks on English historical linguistics, typically addressed to the scholar. The volumes would be suitable for use in an advanced (graduate) course as well by researchers in the field. They provide comprehensive coverage of the history of English, arranged by linguistic level and period, as well as current linguistic research into key questions and debates in English historical linguistics written by leading authorities. The first volume provides an overview of the history of English, the second to fourth volumes focus on the Old, Middle, and Early Modern English periods, and the fifth volume treats language variation from an historical perspective. More specialized topics not typically treated in textbooks (such as pragmatics, discourse, literary language, sociolinguistics) are included. Each volume is free standing and can be used on its own or in combination.
- Comprehensive coverage of the history of English and of major varieties of English
- Synopsis of current research into key questions and debates in English historical linguistics
- Individual chapters written by leading authorities in the field
Information zu Autoren / Herausgebern
Alexander Bergs, Osnabrück, Germany; Laurel Brinton, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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 provides an in-depth account of Old English, organized by linguistic level. Individual chapters, written by recognized experts in the field, review the state of the art in phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic studies of Old English. Key areas of debate, including dialectology, language contact, standardization, and literary language, are also explored. The volume sets the scene with a chapter on pre-Old English and ends with a chapter discussing textual resources available for the study of earlier English.
This volume provides a wide-ranging account of Middle English, organized by linguistic level. Not only are the traditional areas of linguistic study explored in state-of-the-art chapters on Middle English phonology morphology, syntax, and semantics written by experts in the field, but the volume also covers less traditional areas of study, including Middle English creolization, sociolinguistics, literary language (including the language of Chaucer), pragmatics and discourse, dialectology, standardization, language contact, and multilingualism.
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.
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.
