The Oxford History of English

by Lynda Mugglestone (Editor)

Overview

Lynda Mugglestone's hugely popular The Oxford History of English is now updated and entirely reset in a new edition featuring David Crystal's new take on the future of English in the wider world.

In accounts made vivid with examples from a vast range of documentary evidence that includes letters, diaries, and private records, fifteen scholars trace the history of English from its ancient Indo-European origins to the present. They cover the language's versions, written and spoken, revel in its rich variety over fifteen centuries, and chart its varied progress nationally, regionally, and throughout the world. With scholarship at once impeccable and approachable, the authors describe and explain the constantly changing sounds, words, meanings, and grammar of English. This is a book for everyone interested in the language, present and past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199660162
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/06/2013
Edition description:	Updated
Pages:	624
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Lynda Mugglestone is Professor of History of English at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in English at Pembroke College. Recent books include Dictionaries. A Very Short Introduction and, edited with Freya Johnston, Johnson's Pendulum, both published by Oxford.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A History of the English Language, Lynda Mugglestone1. Preliminaries: before English, Terry Hoad2. Beginnings and Transitions: Old English, Susan Irvine3. Contacts and Conflicts: Latin, Norse, and French, Matthew Townend4. Middle English - dialects and diversity, Marilyn Corrie5. From Middle to Early Modern English, Jeremy Smith6. Restructuring Renaissance English, April McMahon7. Mapping Change in Tudor English, Terrtu Nevalainen8. The Babel of Renaissance English, Paula Blank9. Speakers and Writers of Eighteenth-century English, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade10. English in the Nineteenth Century, Lynda Mugglestone11. Modern Regional English in the British Isles, Clive Upton12. English Among the Languages, Richard W. Bailey13. English World-wide in the Twentieth Century, Tom McArthur14. Into the Twenty-first Century, David CrystalTImelineTable of Phonetic EquivalentsGlossaryReferencesContributorsAcknowledgementsIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Any mature and intellectually curious reader will find something of appeal in the well-crafted chapters that encompass the entire chonological range from (pre-) Old English to Modern English. The Oxford History of English is the best companion reading for literary scholars, historians, and sociolinguistics; it broadens significantly the extralinguistic information, which often leads to new ways of accounting for language change." —Language

From the Publisher