This book looks at how historical linguists accommodate the written records used for evidence. The limitations of the written record restrict our view of the past and the conclusions that we can draw about its language. However, the same limitations force us to be aware of the particularities of language. This collection blends the philological with the linguistic, combining questions of the particular with generalizations about language change.

Despite its exceptional frequency and versatility, GET has never been a focus of research in its entire variability, which goes from lexical to grammatical uses, nor in large amounts of data from different varieties of English. The present corpus-based study deals with over 11,600 tokens of GET in written and spoken language from three varieties of English and thus provides new insights for variationist linguistics. Firstly, it offers a comprehensive semasiological-syntactic analysis of GET, i.e. an analysis of all its meanings and all the constructions into which it enters, suggesting ten...

The book is based on a detailed corpus-based investigation of the structure of noun phrases (NPs) in Singaporean English and Kenyan English with the aim of detecting, on the one hand, typological effects from substrate languages and, on the other hand, simplification patterns known to play a role in such varieties.

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.