This book presents new research results in English historical linguistics. Section I deals with sounds and spellings, e.g. the role of writing in language change, Pre-Old English sound changes and their reflection in runic inscriptions plus the first complete list of OE runic inscriptions and with velar fricatives in Middle English. Section II contains studies on words and phrases (e.g. the OE terms for the chain-mail coat), shell nouns, and secondary agent constructions. Section III highlights the developments of because, relative clauses, impersonal and passive constructions. Section...

Beowulf and Beyond is a collection of papers mainly on Medieval English (i.e. Old and Middle English) language, literature and culture, often using comparative and interdisciplinary approaches. It features major authors and texts such as Beowulf, Chaucer, the Wyclif Bible, Margery Kempe, and Malory, but also the poem Judgement Day II, the Epinal-Erfurt glossary (ca. 680), and the Assize of bread (1256), a legal document. The more linguistically oriented studies deal with the language of Old English and Old Norse runic inscriptions, with OE...

The fifteen papers selected for Volume II of English Historical Linguistics 2008 have a different emphasis than those in Volume I (CILT 314, Lenker et al. 2010). Nine concentrate on the development of the English vocabulary and six on historical text linguistics, including the development of text-types and of politeness strategies. Of those in the former group, three have their emphasis on etymology, three on semantic fields, and three on word-formation, although some cover more than one of these areas. The topics include: the treatment of etymological problems in the OED;...