The Oxford History of English

by Mugglestone, Lynda

• ISBN13: 9780199544394
• ISBN10: 0199544395
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-12-05
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Oxford History of English traces the language from its obscure Indo-European roots to its position as the world's first language. In accounts made vivid with examples from an immense range of documentary evidence, including letters, diaries, and private records, fifteen experts describethe history of English in all its versions, written and spoken. They reveal the language's rich and protean variety over the centuries and chart the progress of all its versions, standard, regional, and international. With impeccable and approachable scholarship, they describe and explain itsconstantly changing sounds, words, meanings, and grammar. This is a book for everyone interested in the English language, present and past.

Author Biography

Dr Lynda Mugglestone is a University Lecturer in English and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. She has published widely on language in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. recent work includes Lexicography and the OED. Pioneers in the Untrodden Forest (Oxford University Press, 2002), 'Talking Proper'. The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol 2nd edn. (Oxford University Press, 2003), and Lost for Words. The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary (Yale University Press, 2004).

Table of Contents

Introduction: A History of the English Language

Preliminaries: Before English

Beginnings and Transitions: Old English

Contacts and Conflicts: Latin, Norse, and French

Middle English - Dialects and Diversity

From Middle to Early Modern English

Restructuring Renaissance English

Mapping Change in Tudor English

The Babel of Renaissance English

English at the Onset of the Normative Tradition

English in the Nineteenth Century

Modern Regional English in the British Isles

English Among the Languages

English Worldwide in the Twentieth Century

Into the Twenty-first Century

A Chronology of English

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

References

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.