An Introduction to Old English is an accessible overview of the first centuries in the history of the English language. It combines a wide variety of short texts with a coherent and up-to-date assessment of the forms of language which remain as the foundation of English today, offering a unique study of Old English in context. It is designed for students unfamiliar with the earliest stages of the English language and provides a basis for further study of the history of the language to the present day. All the basic elements of Old English are covered, including nouns, adjectives, verbs, syntax, word order and vocabulary. Wherever possible comparisons are drawn between Old English and the present-day language, but also with other related languages such as Dutch, German and French. There are also chapters introducing readers to both Old English poetry and dialect variation as well as a chapter looking at what happened to the language after the Norman Conquest.* Up-to-date account of the linguistics of the Old English period with particular stress on syntax and vocabulary * Integrates accounts of the language with selected texts graded to improve accessibility for the beginner* Strong emphasis on the relation between Old English and present-day English together with relevant features in related languages* Contains exercises, a glossary of key terms and an Old English glossary
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About the Author
Richard Hogg was formerly Smith Professor of English Language and Medieval Literature at the University of Manchester.
Some twenty years ago it was widely believed that nothing much happened to the English language since the beginning of the eighteenth century. Recent research has shown that this is far from true, and this book offers an introduction to a period that forms the tail end of the standardisation process (codification and prescription), during which important social changes such as the Industrial Revolution are reflected in the language. Late Modern English is currently receiving a lot of scholarly attention, mainly as a result of new developments in sociohistorical linguistics and corpus linguistics. By drawing on such research the present book offers a much fuller account of the language of the period than was previously possible. It is designed for students and beginning scholars interested in Late Modern English.The volume includes: *a basis in recent research by which sociolinguistic models are applied to earlier stages of the language (1700-1900) *a focus on people as speakers (wherever possible) and writers of English *research questions aimed at acquiring skills at working with important electronic research tools such as Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography *reference to electronically available texts and databases such as Martha Ballard’s Diary, the Proceedings of the Old Bailey and Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management.
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From the Back Cover
Some twenty years ago it was widely believed that nothing much has happened to the English language since the beginning of the eighteenth century. Recent research has shown that this is far from true, and this book offers an introduction to a period that forms the tail end of the standardisation process (codification and prescription), during which important social changes (the Industrial Revolution, the Women’s Suffragette movement) are reflected in the language. Late Modern English is currently receiving a lot of scholarly attention, mainly as a result of new developments in historical linguistics. By drawing on such research the present book offers a much fuller account of the language of the period than was previously possible. It is designed for students and beginning scholars interested in the field of Late Modern English. The volume includes: * a basis in recent research by which sociolinguistic models are applied to earlier stages of the language (1700-1900) * a focus on people as speakers (wherever possible) and writers of English * assignments consisting of a selection of texts by a variety of authors illustrating linguistic and sociolinguistic processes going on at the time * reference to relevant internet resources (e.g. the Corpus of Late Modern English Prose, the British National Corpus) for the purpose of illustration as well as to answer research questions. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade has a chair in English Sociohistorical Linguistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
About the Author
Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade has a chair in English Sociohistorical Linguistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. She is the director of a VICI research project called The Codifiers and the English Language: Tracing the Norms of Standard English.
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