The New Cambridge History of the English Language: Volume 3: Transmission, Change and Ideology

by Joan C. Beal (Editor)

Overview

How language change manifests itself in the history of English is the primary focus of this volume. It considers the transmission of English through 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 dedicated chapters to change in different areas and on different levels of language, including investigations of the verbal system, of adverbs, of negation and case variation in English as well as more recent instances of syntactic change. It also looks at issues such as style and spelling practices which fed into emergent standard writing, and the complex of linguistic prescriptivism, with chapters on linguistic ideology, phonological standards and the codification of English in dictionaries. The volume concludes with a consideration of networks and communities of practice and the historical enregisterment of linguistic features.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009205863
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/31/2025
Series:	The New Cambridge History of the English Language
Pages:	832
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

Joan C. Beal is Emeritus Professor of English Language, University of Sheffield. She is 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, 2025).

Table of Contents

General editor's introduction Raymond Hickey; Introduction Joan C. Beal and Raymond Hickey; Part I. The Transmission of English: 1. Dictionaries in the history of English John Considine; 2. Writing grammars for English Ingrid Tieken–Boon van Ostade; 3. Speech representation in the history of English Peter Grund; 4. The history of English in the digital age Caroline Tagg and Melanie Evans; 5. Internet resources for the history of English Ayumi Miura; Part II. Tracking Change in the History of English: 6. Spelling practices and emergent standard writing Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre and Juan Manuel Hernández Campoy; 7. Phonological change Gjertrud Flermoen Stenbrenden; 8. Applying historical phonology David Crystal; 9. The emerging phonological standard Lynda Mugglestone; 10. The history of R in English Raymond Hickey; 11. The system of clausal complementation Hendrik de Smet; 12. Tense and aspect in the history of English Teresa Fanego; 13. Development in the passive construction Peter Petré; 14. Adverbs in the history of English Ursula Lenker; 15. The story of English negation Gabriella Mazzon; 16. Dative and genitive variability in the history of English Anette Rosenbach; 17. Relativisation Cristina Suárez Gómez; 18. Recent grammatical change in English Jill Bowie and Bas Aarts; 19. The history of English registers Nuria Yáñez Bouza and Javier Perez Guerra; 20. The history of semantic theory Susan Fitzmaurice and Seth Mehl; 21. The development of pragmatic markers Laurel Brinton; Part III. Ideology, Society and the History of English: 22. The ideology of standard English Lesley Milroy; 23. The discourse of prescriptivism Don Chapman; 24. English dictionaries from the Eighteenth–century onwards Charlotte Brewer; 25. Networks, coalitions and language change Marina Dossena; 26. Communities of practice in the history of English Joanna Kopaczyk and Andreas Jucker; 27. Historical enregisterment Joan Beal and Paul Cooper.