This pioneering work explores epigraphic evidence for the development of English before the Anglo-Saxon period, bringing together linguistic, historical and archaeological perspectives on early inscriptions, making them more accessible to a wider audience. The volume offers a new account of the Germanic development of Anglo-Saxon England, beginning with an examination of the earliest inscriptions from northern Europe and the oldest inscriptions preserving Germanic names, many of which have only been discovered since the 1980s. The book charts the origins of key terms such as Angle, Saxon and Jute and early writing systems used by Germanic peoples. Drawing on epigraphic evidence from northwestern Germany through to southwestern Denmark and sub-Roman Britain, Mees situates the analysis within historical and linguistic frameworks but also provides archaeological contextualisations, assessed chronologically, for the inscriptions. Taken together, the work re-examines existing models of the early development of English through the lens of contemporary approaches, opening paths for new directions in research on historical dialectology. This book is key reading for students and scholars interested in the history of English and historical linguistics.

Part of the Cambridge Series for Schools and Training Colleges, this 1900 book provides a concise, yet comprehensive, introduction to the development of English.

This pioneering work explores epigraphic evidence for the development of English before the Anglo-Saxon period, bringing together linguistic, historical, and archaeological perspectives on early inscriptions, making them more accessible to a wider audience.

Plural? Monolithic? Legion? - Tom McArthur explores the nature of English in its local and global contexts.

A History of the English Language explores the etymological and social improvement of English from the Roman victory of England to the present day to give an exhaustive review of the distinctive parts of its history. This top of the line exemplary course book has been reconsidered and refreshed and urges the reader to create both a comprehension of present-day English and an illuminated mentality toward the issues influencing the dialect today. The history and advancement of English, from the most punctual referred to works to its status today as a prevailing world dialect, is a subject of real significance to etymologists and students of history. In this book, a group of worldwide specialists cover the whole written history of the English dialect, sketching out its improvement more than fifteen centuries. With an accentuation on later periods, each key stage in the historical backdrop of the dialect is secured, with full records of institutionalization, names, the circulation of English in Britain and North America, and its worldwide spread. New authentic studies of the vital parts of the dialect are displayed, and recorded changes that have influenced English are dealt with as a proceeding with process, clarifying the state of the dialect today. This total and state-of-the-art history of English will be fundamental to every propelled understudy, researchers and instructors in this conspicuous field.

This collection features different perspectives on how digital tools are changing our understanding of language varieties, language contact, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and dialectology through the lens of different historical contexts. With a clear focus on English, chapters in the volume showcase a broad range of digital methods and approaches that can contribute to advancing the study of historical linguistics. Visualization tools and corpus-linguistic techniques are part of the methodologies included in the volume. The chapters present empirically based research and discuss theoretical aspects that emphasize how digitalization is changing our analysis of different domains of language, going from phonology to specific grammatical/morphosyntactic and lexical features, to discourse-related issues more broadly. This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of the English language, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, and digital humanities.