The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume 3Richard M. Hogg, Norman Francis Blake, Roger Lass, R. W. Burchfield This volume of the Cambridge History of the English Language covers the period 1476-1776, beginning at the time of the establishment of Caxton's first press in England and concluding with the American Declaration of Independence, the notional birth of the first (non-insular) extraterritorial English. It encompasses three centuries which saw immense cultural change over the whole of Europe: the late middle ages, the renaissance, the reformation, the enlightenment, and the beginnings of romanticism. During this time, Middle English became Early Modern English and then developed into the early stages of indisputably 'modern', if somewhat old-fashioned, English. In this book, the distinguished team of six contributors traces these developments, covering orthography and punctuation, phonology and morphology, syntax, lexis and semantics, regional and social variation, and the literary language. The volume also contains a glossary of linguistic terms and an extensive bibliography. |
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Addison adjectives adverbial borrowed cant CHEL classical clauses coinages common compounds construction contexts couplet derivations deverbal dialect dictionaries diphthongs discourse discussion distinction Early Modern English eighteenth century element EModE English Language example expressed fifteenth French function Görlach grammar grammarians Hart haue Hiberno-English hyponymy indicate inflectional instance John Johnson language Lass late later Latin lexemes lexical lexis linguistic literary London malapropisms meaning meronymy metaphor Middle English Milton Modern English period native neo-classical normally nouns Old English orthography pattern periphrasis phonetic phonology phrase plural prefix prepositional Present-Day English preterite pronoun pronunciation prose punctuation Puttenham Quintilian relation relative clause renaissance rhetoric rhyme semantic sense sentence seventeenth century Shakespeare sixteenth century social sociolects sociolinguistic speakers speech spelling standard stress structure stylistic suffix syllable syntactic syntax texts thou tion usage variation varieties verb vernacular vocabulary vowel word-formation writers