Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Merja Kytö (Uppsala Universitet, Sweden) ,  Erik Smitterberg (Uppsala Universitet, Sweden)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781009205450

ISBN 10:   1009205455
Pages:   906
Publication Date:   16 October 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

General Editor's Introduction: English, Englishes and the history of the English language Raymond Hickey; Introduction to Volume II Merja Kytö, Erik Smitterberg and Raymond Hickey; Part I. The Textual Record: 1. Early English inscriptions, glosses and documents Jeremy J. Smith; 2. Vernacular speech in writing Colette Moore; 3. Orality in the history of English Matylda Włodarczyk; 4. The story of English orthography, and its analysis Ondřej Tichý and Jan Čermák; 5. English manuscript traditions Christine Wallis; 6. Text editions and the philological tradition Matti Peikola; 7. The history of books and printing Sarah L. Noonan; 8. Historical corpora of English Merja Kytö and Erik Smitterberg; 9. Historical thesauri of English Marc Alexander and Fraser Dallachy; 10. Assessing loanwords and other borrowed elements in the English lexicon Philip Durkin; 11. Historical slang Jonathon Green; 12. Phraseology: from phrasal verbs to proverbs Gabriele Knappe; 13. The language of dialect writing Javier Ruano-García; Part II. Lighthouse Works and Authors: 14. Beowulf as a source text for archaic features R. D. Fulk; 15. Language use in Chaucer's canterbury tales Simon Horobin; 16. Shakespeare's language Jonathan Culpeper and Sean Murphy; Part III. Genre and Medium in the Record: 17. Grammatical treatises in early English Annina Seiler and Nicole Studer-Joho; 18. History writing Claudia Claridge; 19. The language of religious texts Tanja Kohnen and Thomas Kohnen; 20. The language of courtroom documents Terry Walker; 21. Medical and scientific writing Irma Taavitsainen and Turo Hiltunen; 22. The language of newspapers Birte Bös and Nicholas Brownlees; 23. 'Bad data': the case for early audio records Raymond Hickey; 24. Ego documents in the history of English Anita Auer and Raymond Hickey; 25. Personal letters in a community context Samuli Kaislaniemi and Anni Sairio; 26. Women's voices in the history of English Carol Percy; Part IV. Modelling the Record: Methods and Theories: 27. Quantitative methods and the history of English Axel Bohmann and Lotte Sommerer; 28. Generative accounts of change Cynthia L. Allen; 29. Functional accounts of change Hubert Cuyckens; 30. Grammaticalisation Andrew D. M. Smith; 31. Cognitive approaches to the history of English Alexander Bergs; 32. Construction grammar and English historical linguistics Martin Hilpert; 33. Psycholinguistic perspectives on language change Marianne Hundt, Simone E. Pfenninger and Sandra Mollin; Appendix: list of corpora and other electronic resources.

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Author Information

Merja Kytö is Professor Em. of English Language, Uppsala University, Sweden. She co-edited The Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics (2016) and co-authored Intensifiers in Late Modern English (2024). She has published extensively on the morphosyntax and sociopragmatics of Early and Late Modern English. Erik Smitterberg is Professor of English Linguistics at Uppsala University, Sweden. He specialises in the corpus-based study of Late Modern English, focusing on syntax, genre variation, historical sociolinguistics, and punctuation. His publications include the book Syntactic Change in Late Modern English (2021).

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