Nuria Yáñez-Bouza is a Lecturer in English Language at the Universidade de Vigo, Spain and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. Emma Moore is a Reader in Sociolinguistics at the University of Sheffield. Linda van Bergen is a Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. Willem B. Hollmann is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University.

• Introduction: analysing English syntax past and present Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, Emma Moore, Linda van Bergen and Willem B. Hollmann; Part I. Approaches to Grammatical Categories and Categorial Change: 1. What is special about pronouns? John Payne; 2. What for? Bas Aarts; 3. Whatever happened to 'whatever'? Dan Mccolm and Graeme Trousdale; 4. Are comparative modals converging or diverging in English? Different answers from the perspectives of grammaticalisation and constructionalisation Elizabeth Closs Traugott; 5. The definite article in Old English: evidence from Ælfric's Grammar Cynthia L. Allen; Part II. Approaches to Constructions and Constructional Change: 6. How patterns spread: the to-infinitival complement as a case of diffusional change, or 'To-infinitives, and beyond!' Bettelou Los; 7. 'Me Liketh/Lotheth' but 'I Loue/Hate': impersonal/non-impersonal boundaries in old and Middle English Ayumi Miura; 8. 'That's luck, if you ask me': the rise of an intersubjective comment clause Laurel J. Brinton; 9. Misreading and language change: a foray into qualitative historical linguistics Sylvia Adamson; 10. The conjunction and in phrasal and clausal structures in the Old Bailey Corpus Merja Kytö and Erik Smitterberg; Part III. Comparative and Typological Approaches: 11. The role played by analogy in processes of language change: the case of English have-to compared to Spanish tener-que Olga Fischer and Hella Olbertz; 12. Modelling step change: the history of will-verbs in Germanic Kersti Börjars and Nigel Vincent; 13. Possessives world-wide: genitive variation in varieties of English Benedikt Heller and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi; 14. American English: no written standard before the twentieth century? Christian Mair.