The Cambridge History of the English Language is the first multi-volume work to provide a full and authoritative account of the history of English. This volume deals with the history of English up to the Norman conquest. Each chapter gives a chronologically-oriented presentation of the data, surveys scholarship in the area and takes full account of the impact of developing and current linguistic theory on the interpretation of the data. The chapters have been written so as to be accessible both to specialists and nonspecialists, and have been carefully edited by Profesor Hogg to create an...

Volume II deals with the Middle English period, approximately 1066-1476, and describes and analyzes developments in the language from the Norman Conquest to the introduction of printing. This period witnessed important features such as the assimilation of French and the emergence of a standard variety of English. There are chapters on phonology and morphology, syntax, dialectology, lexis and semantics, literary language, and onomastics. Each chapter concludes with a section on further reading; and the volume as a whole is supported by an extensive glossary of linguistic terms and a...