Elly van Gelderen - A History of the English Language: Revised Edition

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Amsterdam/Philadelphia

There are a number of well-known histories of the English Language (Baugh & Cable, Pyles & Algeo, Barber, and Fennell). The justification for yet another book on the history of English comes from having taught a course on this topic at the undergraduate and graduate levels for almost 10 years and not finding any of the books completely satisfactory. The present book will be different from others in being more grammatical and typological in focus, i.e. language-internal, although this can of course not be a course on Old and Middle English or on historical linguistics and therefore only parts of the grammar are covered. I have used the change from synthetic to analytic as a leitmotiv.

A lot of emphasis is placed on linguistic (phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic) analysis of Old, Middle, and early Modern English texts. This means students will learn how to approach older texts and to work with these. Most examples and texts will be authentic and the use of facsimile editions is encouraged. Incorporating these texts in this book, rather than in an (optional) workbook, makes it easier to see working with texts as an integral part of a class on the history of English. I have provided possible answers to the in-text questions and the other exercises. In my classes, we usually go over the texts and exercises and the answers provide a review. Having the answers in the back makes the book usable for self-study as well.

The book differs from, for instance, Fennell in that there will be less emphasis on sociolinguistic theories, though many descriptions will be given of, for instance, h-deletion, prescriptive forces, and pronoun shift. External history is dealt with in (for the modern period). There are sections on literacy, the re-emergence of English, the printing process, authorship debates, and world Englishes. Throughout most of the book, I use the term English in its general sense, including all varieties, but I sometimes use British or American if this makes the point clearer.

There are many smaller differences in emphasis between this book and similar histories of English. In , there is information on language prehistory based on Cavalli-Sforzas and Greenbergs work, not found in most textbooks. This is an area students (and the general public) are interested in. Most other textbooks start with Indo-European. The chapters on Old, Middle, and Early Modern English are relatively standard, but each chapter includes many examples and has additional texts at the end. The texts are chosen because they represent the typical canon and also because audio versions exist on the web in most cases.

Chapters provides a brief introduction to some theories of language, language change, and acquisition.

Another difference between this book and other history of English books is the incorporation of electronic resources in the textbook and exercises. Recent years have seen a wealth of electronic resources for historical linguistics research, more so perhaps than in any other humanities field. The OED online is invaluable; the Old and Middle English corpora so helpful; websites with Old and Middle English audio files are abundant, as are sites focusing on the history and providing detailed maps; and pictures of manuscript facsimiles are very easily accessible. No earlier textbook incorporates these. I will attempt to do so with a particular focus on using the OED (and even without online access, this should be possible). For the printed version, I will only include URLs that can be expected to remain up, e.g. university sites. The associated website (https://doi.org/10.1075/z.183.website) contains many more links, and these links will be updated regularly. The ones in the book that will fail to open after a while will be listed on that website too.

As mentioned, I will focus on internal changes, in particular on the change from synthetic to analytic. I also discuss the influence of external factors on internal changes. The book is not theoretical in orientation. I do not discuss sociolinguistic theories, or theoretical issues in historical linguistics, except for mentioning e.g. grammaticalization in the context of the change from synthetic to analytic and briefly in .

The book has many idiosyncrasies due to the author being a non-native speaker, having taught English and linguistics in the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States. Electronic texts provided by the Oxford Text Archive, the Gutenberg Project, and the Dictionary of Old English project have been extremely valuable; the concordance program used is MonoConc. I would most like to thank Johanna Wood for thinking through many problems of content and organization with me and for extensive comments on the writing and examples. Viktorija Todorovska is the best (copy-)editor I know; she is someone who understands the issues and has such a grasp of the English language in all its forms. Tim Gades was wonderful in developing the website that accompanies this book; he was creative and knowledgeable. I am very grateful to Olga Fischer for going through the chapters very carefully and for giving me so many good suggestions which I hope I have incorporated. For other comments and lots of assistance, I would like to thank Harry Bracken, Chen Chen Sun, and Shane Drews. I would also like to thank several anonymous reviewers and Mariana Bahtchevanova, James Berry, Jean Brink, Jade Corn, Nancy Hawkes, Lisa Genuit, Dhira Mahoney, Nicteha Martinez, Brenda McTighe, Donka Minkova, Elizabeth Moreau, Laura Parsons, Amy Shinabarger, Lynn Sims, and many others. Using this book before it was published was very helpful and Emily Hsu, Kristen LaRue, Tyler May, Victor Parraguinaldo, John Ryan, and Olena Tsurska really helped discussing this text in a small seminar.

The year 2006 was a bumper-crop year for books on the history of English as Donka Minkova writes in a 2009 review in Language. Apart from the first edition of the current work, several other works appeared in 2006: A History of the English Language edited by Richard Hogg and David Denison, The Oxford History of English edited by Lynda Mugglestone, The Handbook of The History of English, edited by Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los, and The English Language: a linguistic history by Laurel Brinton and Leslie Arnovick. The current book remains sufficiently different from these to warrant a new edition. It remains the most succinct and accessible yet comprehensive of linguistic histories.

I am very lucky to have John Benjamins as publisher, not only in being willing to put out a revised edition and also for their always incredibly beautiful, fast, and accurate work. It is much appreciated! The history of English in its complex shapes and forms changes fast and, after eight years, chapters such as listed some theories on the causes of change are and I have left it that way;