THE HISTORY OF

ENGLISH

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THE HISTORY OF

ENGLISH

Ishtla Singh

PART OF HACHETTE LIVRE UK

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Hodder Education, part of Hachette Livre UK, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH

http://www.hoddereducation.com

© 2005 Ishtla Singh

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency: Saffron House,

6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

The advice and information in this book are believed to be true and

accurate at the date of going to press, but neither the authors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN: 978 0 340 80695 1

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Typeset in 11/12 pt. Goudy by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester Printed and bound in India

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Contents

List of Figures		vii
List of Tables		ix
List of Symbols and Conventions		xi
Acknowledgements		xiii
Introduction		1
1.	English as a Changing Language	5
	1.1 Introduction	5
	1.2 Sound Change	6
	1.3 Lexical Change	9
	1.4 Semantic Change	19
	1.5 Morphological Change	24
	1.6 Syntactic Change	30
	1.7 Study Questions	36
2.	Language Families and the Pre-history of English	39
	2.1 Introduction	39
	2.2 The Roots of English and Proto-Indo-European	41
	2.3 Meeting the Ancestors I	52
	2.4 Meeting the Ancestors II	59
	2.5 Study Questions	64
3.	Old English, 500–1100	66
	3.1 Introduction	66
	3.2 Social History	67
	3.3 Anglo-Saxon Literature	73
	3.4 The Language of Old English	75
	3.5 Doing Anglo-Saxon Gender: Heroic Men and Monstrous Women	92
	3.6 Study Questions	100
4.	Middle English, 1100–1500	103
	4.1 Introduction	103
	4.2 Social History	104
	4.3 Middle English Literature	112
	4.4 The Language of Middle English	113

vi The History of English
	4.5 Contact and Change: Middle English Creolization?	127
	4.6 Study Questions	136
5.	Early Modern English, 1500–1700	139
	5.1 Introduction	139
	5.2 Social History	140
	5.3 Early Modern English Literature	147
	5.4 The Language of Early Modern English	148
	5.5 Contact and Change: English in Barbados	167
	5.6 Study Questions	173
6.	Modern English, 1700 onwards	174
	6.1 Introduction	174
	6.2 The Eighteenth Century and the Rise
	of the Prescriptive Tradition	177
	6.3 Nineteenth-Century Contact and Change:
	The Case of Singlish	188
	6.4 The Twenty-First Century and Beyond:
	Where Will English Boldly Go?	198
	6.5 Conclusion	202
	6.6 Study Questions	203
Bibliography		207
Index		215

List of Figures

1.1	The Southern Vowel Shift	7
2.1	Indo-European cognates for daughter	46
2.2	The Indo-European family	51
5.1	The Great Vowel Shift	154

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