The New Cambridge History of the English Language – serie

The origins, development and diversification of English since its earliest beginnings to the present day have fascinated generations of scholars, and continue to do so. With contributions from the leading researchers in the field, these landmark volumes provide an innovative, inclusive and topical survey of all aspects of the history of English, focusing on recent research and approaches, and providing cutting-edge information on a variety of sub-fields. Volume I considers the historical framework for English; Volume II looks at diachronic data and documentation, along with models for linguistic analysis; and Volume III highlights the transmission of English across the centuries. Volume IV concentrates on the various regional forms of English in Britain, Ireland and Europe; Volume V emphasises the history of English in North America and the Caribbean, and Volume VI, split into two parts, is dedicated to varieties of English across Africa, and Asia, Australia and the Pacific in Part 2.

This volume considers the various kinds of text which document the history of the English language. It looks closely at vernacular speech in writing and the broader context of orality along with issues of literacy and manuscripts. The value of text corpora in the collection and analysis of historical data is demonstrated in a number of chapters. A special focus of the volume is seen in the chapters on genre and medium in the textual record. Various types of evidence are considered, for instance, journalistic work, medical writings, historiography, grammatical treatises and ego documents, especially emigrant letters. A dedicated section examines the theories, models and methods which have been applied to the textual record of historical English, including generative and functionalist approaches as well as grammaticalisation and construction grammar. In addition, a group of chapters consider the English language as found in Beowulf and the writings of Chaucer and Shakespeare.

This volume investigates the Indo-European and Germanic background to the English language, looking at how inherited elements of phonology and morphology survived into the Old English period. It then considers various kinds of contact between the first speakers of English and speakers of Celtic, Latin and Scandinavian, under different sociolinguistic circumstances. The manner in which initial standardisation of English took place, with considerable code-switching, and the structural changes which the language underwent in this early period are discussed. The various analytical methods used to examine the available data are considered in a dedicated chapter on philology. The volume also contains a set of longer chapters. These take a detailed look at various levels of language from phonology, morphology, syntax through to semantics and pragmatics, and include reviews of historical sociolinguistics and onomastics.

This volume examines the development of forms of English in North America from the earliest founder populations through to present-day varieties in the United States and Canada. The linguistic analyses of today's forms emphasise language variation and change with a view to determining the trajectories for current linguistic change. The first part on English in the United States also has dedicated chapters on the history of African American English and the English of Spanish-heritage people in the United States. Part II is concerned with English in Canada and contains seven chapters beginning with the anglophone settlement of Canada and continuing with chapters on individual regions of that country including English in Quebec. Part III consists of chapters devoted to the history of English in the Anglophone Caribbean, looking at various creoles in that region, both in the islands and the Rim, with a special chapter on Jamaica and on the connections between the Caribbean and the United States.

This volume focuses on the vernacular forms of English found at various locations both in Britain and Ireland as well as a few in continental Europe. The goal of these chapters is to provide histories of those dialects not necessarily leading to standard English, largely within the framework of language variation and change, which is the immediate concern of the opening chapters. There follow treatments of dialects in English including that of early London and the various regions of England. The English language in Scotland is given special treatment with chapters on Scots and Standard Scottish English. Wales and Ireland form the focus of subsequent chapters which in particular examine language contact and its effect on English in these regions. The volume closes with presentations of the development of English in the Channel Islands, Gibraltar, Malta and Cyprus.

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.

This volume offers in-depth coverage of varieties of English across the world, outside of the British and North American arenas. It is split into two parts, with Part one dedicated to varieties of English across Africa, and Part two looking at varieties in Asia, and Australia and the Pacific. There are introductory chapters dealing with the colonial transportation of English overseas, and the generic types of English which resulted, often labelled World Englishes, and examinations of English-lexifier pidgins and creoles. The remaining sections look at different geographic regions. Anglophone Africa divides into three blocks: west, east and south, each with different linguistic ecologies determined by history and demography. Asia, especially South Asia and South-East Asia, is similar in the kinds of English it now shows, with the significance of East Asia for varieties of English increasing in recent years. Varieties of English in Australia and the Pacific are also examined.