The Politics Of Early Old English Sound Change

This is the first extensive study of Old English to utilise the insights and methodologies of sociolinguistics. Building on previous philological and historical work, it takes into account the sociology and social dialectology of Old English and offers a description of its speech communities informed by the theory of social networks and communities of practice. Specifically, this book uses data from historical narratives and legal documents and examines the interplay of linguistic innovation, variation, and change with such sociolinguistic parameters as region, scribal office, gender, and social status. Special attention is given to the processes of supralocalisation and their correlation with periods of political centralisation in the history of Anglo-Saxon England.

In A History of Old English Meter, R. D. Fulk offers a wide-ranging reference on Anglo-Saxon meter. Fulk examines the evidence for chronological and regional variation in the meter of Old English verse, studying such linguistic variables as the treatment of West Germanic parasite vowels, contracted vowels, and short syllables under secondary and tertiary stress, as well as a variety of supposed dialect features. Fulk's study of such variables points the way to a revised understanding of the role of syllable length in the construction of early Germanic meters and furnishes criteria for distinguishing dialectal from poetic features in the language of the major Old English poetic codices. On this basis, it is possible to draw conclusions about the probable dialect origins of much verse, to delineate the characteristics of at least four discrete periods in the development of Old English meter, and with some probability to assign to them many of the longer poems, such as Genesis A, Beowulf, and the works of Cynewulf. A History of Old English Meter will be of interest to scholars of Anglo-Saxon, historians of the English language, Germanic philologists, and historical linguists.

The papers in this volume focus on notions which are central to the work of John M. Anderson – the founder of Dependency Phonology – and to phonological theory: the idea of structural analogy between phonology and syntax; the head/dependent relation; the idea that phonological representations are best conceived of in terms of a set of privative elements (rather than as binary-valued features); and the related notions of contrastivity and specification (and non-specification). An important issue dealt with is the relationship between specification and derivationality, and the question whether derivations are necessary in phonological theory. Many of the contributions provide sound empirical support for the appeal to elements and to headhood at all levels of phonological analysis. The book will be of interest to anyone interested in current issues in phonological theory.

This ambitious handbook takes advantage of recent advances in the study of the history of English to rethink the understanding of the field.

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.

How and why did grammatical gender, found in Old English and in other Germanic languages, gradually disappear from English and get replaced by a system where the gender of nouns and the use of personal pronouns depend on the natural gender of the referent? How is this shift related to 'irregular agreement' (such as she for ships) and 'sexist' language use (such as generic he) in Modern English, and how is the language continuing to evolve in these respects? Anne Curzan's accessibly written and carefully researched study is based on extensive corpus data, and will make a major contribution by providing a historical perspective on these often controversial questions. It will be of interest to researchers and students in history of English, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, language and gender, and medieval studies.

Describes the early conversion to Christianity of the pagan peoples of an area stretching from Stratford-upon-Avon to Offa's Dyke.

Written by a team of global scholars, this is the first Handbook covering the rapidly growing field of historical orthography. Comprehensive yet accessible, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students in the field, and in related areas such as morphology, syntax, historical linguistics, linguistic typology and sociolinguistics.

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. For further publications in English linguistics see also our Dialects of English book series. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Natalie Fecher.