The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.

The Handbook of the History of English is a collection of articles written by leading specialists in the field that focus on the theoretical issues behind the facts of the changing English language. organizes the theoretical issues behind the facts of the changing English language innovatively and applies recent insights to old problems surveys the history of English from the perspective of structural developments in areas such as phonology, prosody, morphology, syntax, semantics, language variation, and dialectology offers readers a comprehensive overview of the various theoretical perspectives available to the study of the history of English and sets new objectives for further research

The papers collected in this volume were first presented at the 14th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (Bergamo, 2006). Alongside studies of syntax, morphology, lexis and semantics, published in two sister volumes, many innovative contributions focused on geo-historical variation in English. A carefully peer-reviewed selection, including two plenary lectures, appears here in print for the first time, bearing witness to the increasing scholarly interest in varieties of English other than so-called 'standard' English. In all the contributions, well-established methods of historical dialectology combine with new theoretical approaches, in an attempt to shed more light on phenomena that have hitherto remained unexplored, or have only just begun to be investigated. Perceptual dialectology is also taken into consideration, and state-of-the-art tools, such as electronic corpora and atlases, are employed consistently, ensuring the methodological homogeneity of the contributions.

The availability of large electronic corpora has caused major shifts in linguistic research, including the ability to analyze much more data than ever before, and to perform micro-analyses of linguistic structures across languages. This has historical linguists to rethink many standard assumptions about language history, and methods and approaches that are relevant to the study of it. The field is now interested in, and attracts, specialists whose fields range from statistical modeling to acoustic phonetics. These changes have even transformed linguists' perceptions of the very processes of language change, particularly in English, the most studied language in historical linguistics due to the size of available data and its status as a global language. The Oxford Handbook of the History of English takes stock of recent advances in the study of the history of English, broadening and deepening the understanding of the field. It seeks to suggest ways to rethink the relationship of English's past with its present, and make transparent the variety of conditions and processes that have been instrumental in shaping that history. Setting a new standard of cross-theoretical collaboration, it covers the field in an innovative way, providing diachronic accounts of major influences such as language contact, and typological processes that have shaped English and its varieties, as well as highlighting recent and ongoing developments of Englishes--celebrating the vitality of language change over the centuries and the many contexts and processes through which language change occurs.

The volume brings together seventeen peer-reviewed, revised papers originally presented at the 16th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 16), held in August 2010 at the University of Pécs, Hungary. This selection aims to show how theoretical and empirical approaches can be combined in the historical investigation of the English language, what insights and exact information can be obtained about language change in the history of English with the help of tools like historical corpora or with inter- and transdisciplinary methods. The volume is arranged around five thematic headings. The first discusses dialects and regional variation from the viewpoint of contact linguistics and phonological, morphological, and lexical change. The second has syntactic variation and grammaticalization as its focus. Papers on grammatical changes in nominal and pronominal constructions are presented in part three. The integration of loanwords in Middle English is discussed in part four, and the last investigates communicative intentions in historical discourse. The volume should appeal to linguists interested in historical aspects of dialect and discourse studies, historical pragmatics, contact linguistics, grammaticalization theory, corpus linguistics, and of course language change.

A New Literary History of the Long Twelfth Century offers a new narrative of what happened to English language writing in the long twelfth century, the period that saw the end of the Old English tradition and the beginning of Middle English writing. It discusses numerous neglected or unknown texts, focusing particularly on documents, chronicles and sermons. To tell the story of this pivotal period, it adopts approaches from both literary criticism and historical linguistics, finding a synthesis for them in a twenty-first century philology. It develops new methodologies for addressing major questions about twelfth-century texts, including when they were written, how they were read and their relationship to earlier works. Essential reading for anyone interested in what happened to English after the Norman Conquest, this study lays the groundwork for the coming decade's work on transitional English.

The twelve articles in this volume promote the growing contacts between medieval linguistics and medieval cultural studies generally. Articles address medieval English linguistics, and the interrelation in Anglo-Saxon England between Latin and vernacular language and culture.

This book primarily provides a detailed description and interpretation of one of the most fascinating and poorly understood processes in English accentology, i.e. Aitken’s Law, also known as the Scottish Vowel Length Rule by which vowel quantity in Scottish English is fully predictable, as opposed to the other regional accents of English speakers. The research also contributes to the understanding of the working of long-short vowel distinctions in the languages of the world and argues that all phenomena observed in connection with the presence and absence vowel quantity contrasts are a direct consequence of the working of a relatively small set of universal and inviolable principles of grammar.

This study of word frequency effects on sound change provides a resolution of the Neogrammarian controversy. Betty S. Phillips discusses the implications for phonology and historical linguistics of certain types of change affecting the most frequent words first and other types of change affecting the least frequent words first.