This is the first comprehensive book-length analysis of personal pronouns in present-day English. Drawing on the Survey of English (SEU) corpus and the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), Katie Wales examines a wide variety of discourses, texts and varieties of English around the world. Her approach is pragmatic and functional, rather than formal, and her concern is with speakers and writers and their uses of language in social, cultural and rhetorical contexts. The discussion is illustrated with numerous examples of the usage of personal pronouns and also of reflexives and...

The Prague School theory of functional sentence perspective (FSP) is concerned with the distribution of information as determined by all meaningful elements in a written or spoken sentence, such as intonation, word order and context. Jan Firbas discusses the key phenomenon of communicative dynamism, which the sentence elements carry in different degrees, and the distribution of which determines the orientation or perspective of the sentence.

This volume traces the history of English in North America during the past 400 years. Sixteen leading authorities in the field consider how the vocabulary (both standard and slang), grammar, spelling, and usage in both the standard language and regional and social dialects have evolved, and examine the relationship of and interaction between British and American English. Separate chapters deal with African-American English, Canadian English and Newfoundland English. The volume also includes suggestions for further reading, a glossary of linguistic terms, and an extensive bibliography.

Speakers of British and American English display some striking differences in their use of grammar. In this detailed survey, John Algeo considers questions such as: Who lives on a street, and who lives in a street? Who takes a bath, and who has a bath? Who says Neither do I, and who says Nor do I? After 'thank you', who says Not at all and who says You're welcome? Whose team are on the ball, and whose team isn't? Containing extensive quotations from real-life English on both sides of the Atlantic, collected over the past twenty years, this is a clear and highly organized guide to the...

American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society has for fifty years included a regular collection of neologisms called "Among the New Words." A recent issue, for example, includes four quotations for "date rape," two for "designated driver," and six for "DNA fingerprinting," "intifada," and other current terms. Complete documentation is given for all citations, which are fuller than those given in most dictionaries and both British and American sources have been consulted. At the time these terms appeared in "Among the New Words," they appeared in none of the major dictionaries....

American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society has for fifty years included a regular collection of neologisms called "Among the New Words." A recent issue, for example, includes four quotations for "date rape," two for "designated driver," and six for "DNA fingerprinting," "intifada," and other current terms. Complete documentation is given for all citations, which are fuller than those given in most dictionaries and both British and American sources have been consulted. At the time these terms appeared in "Among the New Words," they appeared in none of the major dictionaries....

This book traces the development of Standard English, revealing a complex and intriguing history that challenges the usual textbook accounts. Leading scholars offer a wide-ranging analysis, from theoretical discussions of the origin of dialects, to detailed descriptions of the history of individual Standard English features. Ranging from Middle English to the Modern English period, the volume concludes that Standard English had no one single ancestor dialect, but is the cumulative result of generations of authoritative writing from many text types.

Speakers of British and American English display some striking differences in their use of grammar. In this detailed survey, John Algeo considers questions such as: Who lives on a street, and who lives in a street? Who takes a bath, and who has a bath? Who says Neither do I, and who says Nor do I? After 'thank you', who says Not at all and who says You're welcome? Whose team are on the ball, and whose team isn't? Containing extensive quotations from real-life English on both sides of the Atlantic, collected over the past twenty years, this is a clear and highly organized guide to the...