Overview

How language change manifests itself in the history of English is the primary focus of this volume. It considers the transmission of English though dictionaries and grammars down to the digital means found today. The chapters investigate various issues in language change, for instance what role internal and external factors played throughout history. There are several chapters dedicated to change in different areas and on different levels of language, includinginvestigations of the verbal system, of adverbs, of negation and case variation in English as well as more recent instances of syntactic change. This volume also looks atissues such as style and spelling practices which fed into emergent standard writing, and the complex issue of linguistic prescriptivism, with chapters on linguistic ideology, phonological standards and the codification of English in dictionaries. Itconcludes with a consideration of networks and communities of practice and also of the historical enregisterment of linguistic features.

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9781009205863

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Author Information

Joan C. Beal is Emeritus Professor of English Language, University of Sheffield. She is an editor of De Gruyter Dialects of English series, co-editor of Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Prescriptivism (2003), author of English in Modern Times 1700–1945 (2004), and co-author of The English Language (third edition, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

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