A History of English (RLE: English Language)A History of English, first published in 1970, is a book for beginners in linguistic history. This title examines the changes in English language speech and writing over a period of almost 2000 years, whilst also exploring more recent changes within the author’s living memory. This title aims to raise countless issues for enquiry and discussion, and its purpose is to serve as a springboard for language history learning rather than a textbook. |
Contents
1570 1370 | |
19701770 | |
1 General considerations | |
1370 1170 | |
Alfredian | |
770 570 | |
The changing status and distribution of English | |
Conclusion | |
a Invention and sound symbolism 20 b Exploitation of analogies of various kinds Borrowing from living languages 21 Borrowing from dead langua... | |
Impossibility of categorising all innovations 23 Varying matrices of exposure to foreign languages and their effects 24 Examples of borrowing throu... | |
an element of stability Intonation | |
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Common terms and phrases
adjective alliteration already American English areas back vowel beginning belong borrowing British calque centuries characteristic Christian clauses common compounds consonant contrast corresponding dative dependent clauses dialects diphthongs distinction earlier early elements England established evidence examples extent formations French front vowels function genitive Germanic Germanic languages grammatical grammatical gender half-line important indicative inflections Jespersen kind language late Latin lengthening lexical linguistic loans loanwords long vowel loss meaning modern morphology native nominal normal Northumbria nouns origin participle past pattern period periphrastic phoneme phonological place-names plural poetry positional syntax prepositions present pronoun pronunciation realisation recorded remained runic alphabet Scandinavian sense sentences sequence settlement shows singular sound speakers speech spelling standard stress strong verbs structure suffixes survived syllables syntactic tendency tradition unstressed syllables usage variant variety vocabulary weak form Wessex West Saxon words writing written