A History of the English LanguageRichard Hogg, David Denison 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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Common terms and phrases
adjectives adverbs ÆCHom American English 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 speech 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