Studies in the History of the English Language V

Variation and Change in English Grammar and Lexicon: Contemporary Approaches

Robert A. Cloutier, Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm, William A. Kretzschmar, Jr., Robert A. Cloutier, Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm, William A. Kretzschmar, Jr.

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9783110220322
• eBook ISBN: 9783110220339
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Langues

This collection of essays focuses on current approaches to variation and change in historical English grammar and lexicon. Of the twelve papers in the collection, half are based on grammar and syntax, half on lexical developments. The volume highlights the contributions that strong empirical research can make to our knowledge of the development of English grammar, especially as realized in lexical development. In illustration of contemporary research trends, the articles in the collection make strong use of extralinguistic factors to discuss language change as well as argue for internal and structural development.

The authors are drawn from nine different countries, and each article is followed by a commentary and response that provide actual dialogue about the issues in the field, thus representing world-wide discussion of issues in the history of English. The essays recognize the different audiences for historical variation and change - formal linguists, sociolinguists, and lexicographers - and specifically address the interests and discourse in those areas.

The volume shows how historical studies of English are increasingly engaged with contemporary trends in linguistics, at the same time as demonstrating how empirical and other methods can bring classical philology fully into the sphere of contemporary linguistics without abandoning its traditional concerns.

Table of contents

• Frontmatter
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Dialogic Contexts as Motivations for Syntactic Change
• Whatever Happened to English Sluicing
• Notion of Direction and Old English Prepositional Phrases
• Survival of the Strongest: Strong Verb Inflection from Old to Modern English
• Subject Compounding and a Functional Change of the Derivational Suffix -ing in the History of English
• Bad Ideas in the History of English Usage
• The State of English Etymology (A Few Personal Observations)
• From Germanic ‘fence’ to ‘urban settlement’: On the Semantic Development of English town
• Celtic Influence on English: A Re-Evaluation
• When arīven Came to England: Tracing Lexical Re-Structuring by Borrowing in Middle and Early Modern English. A Case Study
• Reexamining Orthographic Practice in the Auchinleck Manuscript Through Study of Complete Scribal Corpora
• How Medium Shapes Language Development: The Emergence of Quotative Re Online
• Backmatter