Analysing Older English

Description

Is historical linguistics different in principle from other linguistic research? This book addresses problems encountered in gathering and analysing data from early English, including the incomplete nature of the evidence and the dangers of misinterpretation or over-interpretation. Even so, gaps in the data can sometimes be filled. The volume brings together a team of leading English historical linguists who have encountered such issues first-hand, to discuss and suggest solutions to a range of problems in the phonology, syntax, dialectology and onomastics of older English. The topics extend widely over the history of English, chronologically and linguistically, and include Anglo-Saxon naming practices, the phonology of the alliterative line, computational measurement of dialect similarity, dialect levelling and enregisterment in late Modern English, stress-timing in English phonology and the syntax of Old and early Modern English. The book will be of particular interest to researchers and students in English historical linguistics.

David Denison is Smith Professor of English Language and Medieval Literature in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester. Ricardo Bermudez-Otero is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester. Chris McCully is Managing Director of the Graduate School for the Humanities at the Rijksuniversiteit, Groningen. Emma Moore is a Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at the University of Sheffield.

'This volume comprises a wide-ranging collection of papers on historical linguistics. ... [it] continues an approach to historical data of which Richard Hogg would have been proud.' Phillip Wallage, Journal of English Language and Linguistics