Books by Roger Lass

A detailed study of Old English, taking as its point of departure the 'standard theory' of generative phonology as developed by Chomsky and Halle. Dr Lass and Dr Anderson set out all the main phonological processes of Old English and aghainst their larger historical background (including subsequent developments in the history of English).

Dr Lass examines certain crucial issues in phonological and general linguistic theory through detailed studies of English phonetics, dialectology and language-history. He argues that contemporary 'standard' phonological theory is inhibited and misled by the related disadvantages of an artificially constrained formalism and a restricted database.

This work gives broad, unbiased answers to such questions as: what is the phonological organisation of natural languages like?; what theoretical and analytical approaches are most fruitful?; and is there any phonological theory that is the best in all ways?

Old English is a companion to Old English studies and to historical studies of early English in general. It is also an introduction to Indo-European studies in the particular sense in which they underpin the history of English. Professor Roger Lass makes accessible in a linguistically up-to-date and readable form the Indo-European and Germanic background to Old English, as well as what can be reconstructed about the resulting state of Old English itself. His book is a bridge between the more elementary Old English grammars and the major philological grammars and recent interpretations of the Old English data.Old English assumes a basic knowledge of phonetics and phonology, the elements of syntactic and morphological theory, and an introduction to historical linguistics. An extensive glossary gives definitions of the major technical terms used.