Overview

This volume drawn from the 20th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL, Edinburgh 2018) focuses on the role of language contact in the history of English. It showcases a wide variety of historical linguistic approaches, including ‘big data’ analyses of large corpora, dialectological methods, and the study of translated texts. It also breaks new ground by applying relevant insights from other fields, among them postcolonial linguistics and anthropology. This pluralistic approach brings new and under-studied issues within the scope of explanation, and challenges some long-held assumptions about the nature of historical change in English. The volume will be of interest to an audience interested in the history of English, and the impact of its contact with Viking Age Norse, Old French, and Latin.

Full Product Details

9789027210654

Table of Contents

Reviews

Overall, the volume offers new insights into HEL in contact situations through a balanced account that considers both traditional philological analysis and the ‘big data’ approach. The volume further provides new and nuanced understandings of several areas which are generally less known or less often researched, for example, Cornish English, Old Northumbrian and Older Scots, lexical replacement and diachronic speech acts. Innovative methods may also open new avenues of research into the history and development of English -- Sabina Nedelius, University of Gothenburg, in English Language and Linguistics (2023)

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available