The Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics

This Handbook captures the essentials of English historical linguistics: theories, methodologies, materials, processes of language change, and the research process.

Merja Kytö (Edited by), Päivi Pahta (Edited by)

9781108744348, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 April 2020

650 pages, 33 b/w illus. 2 maps 19 tables
24.5 x 17 x 3.3 cm, 1.1 kg

'An engaging, well-planned survey of evidence, theories and recent research, particularly strong on methodology. Students and seasoned scholars too will undoubtedly find much to interest and enlighten them.' David Denison, University of Manchester

English historical linguistics is a subfield of linguistics which has developed theories and methods for exploring the history of the English language. This Handbook provides an account of state-of-the-art research on this history. It offers an in-depth survey of materials, methods, and language-theoretical models used to study the long diachrony of English. The frameworks covered include corpus linguistics, historical sociolinguistics, historical pragmatics and manuscript studies, among others. The chapters, by leading experts, examine the interplay of language theory and empirical data throughout, critically assessing the work in the field. Of particular importance are the diverse data sources which have become increasingly available in electronic form, allowing the discipline to develop in new directions. The Handbook offers access to the rich and many-faceted spectrum of work in English historical linguistics, past and present, and will be useful for researchers and students interested in hands-on research on the history of English.

Introduction Merja Kytö and Päivi Pahta
Part I. Framework: Section 1. Theories and Methodologies: 1. The variationist approach Suzanne Romaine
2. Quantitative approaches to diachronic corpus linguistics Martin Hilpert and Stefan Th. Gries
3. English historical pragmatics Gabriella Mazzon
4. Construction grammar Graeme Trousdale
5. Generative frameworks and approaches Elly van Gelderen
6. Philological methods Robert D. Fulk
Section 2. Evidence: Material and Data: 7. Manuscripts and early printed books Simon Horobin
8. Corpora and online resources in English historical linguistics María-José López-Couso
9. Audio recordings Christian Mair
10. Early and Late Modern English grammars as evidence in English historical linguistics Nuria Yáñez-Bouza
11. Extracting data from historical material Erik Smitterberg
Part II. Analyses: Section 3. Perspectives on Processes of Change: 12. Phonological change in English Raymond Hickey
13. Change in the English lexicon Christian Kay and Kathryn Allan
14. Morphosyntactic change Olga Fischer
15. Semantic and pragmatic change Susan M. Fitzmaurice
16. Genre dynamics in the history of English Irma Taavitsainen
17. Processes of sociolinguistic and sociopragmatic change Minna Nevala
18. Standardization Joan C. Beal
19. Contact-related processes of change in the early history of English Peter Trudgill
20. Global spread of English: processes of change Marianne Hundt
Section 4. Highlighting the Research Process: 21. Variationist versus text-linguistic approaches to grammatical change in English: nominal modifiers of head nouns Douglas Biber, with Jesse Egbert, Bethany Gray, Rahel Oppliger and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
22. Identifying micro-changes in a particular linguistic change-type: the case of subjectification Elizabeth Closs Traugott
23. The OED and HTOED as tools in practical research: a test case examining the impact of loanwords on areas of the core lexicon Philip Durkin
24. The individuality of English in the multilingual Middle Ages Tim William Machan
25. Ambisyllabicity in English: present and past Donka Minkova and Kie Ross Zuraw
26. Typological change: investigating loss of inflection in early English Cynthia Allen
27. Third-person present singular verb inflection in Early Modern English: new evidence from speech-related texts Terry Walker
28. Visual pragmatics: speech presentation and Middle English manuscripts Colette Moore.

Subject Areas: Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF], Linguistics [CF], Language: history & general works [CBX], Language [C]