Books in the Studies in English Language series

Leading scholars trace the development of Standard English, revealing a complex history that challenges the usual textbook accounts. The volume demonstrates that Standard English has no one single ancestor dialect, but is the cumulative result of generations of authoritative writing from many text types.

Have you ever wondered whether to spell a particular compound with a space or a hyphen - and why? This book discusses what compounds are and how they differ from other linguistic units. It provides a detailed analysis of English compound spelling and suggests a rule of thumb for doubtful cases.

The eighteenth century was a key period in the development of the English language, in which the modern standard emerged and many dictionaries and grammars first appeared. The novel insights offered in this book extend our knowledge of the English language at the onset of the modern period.

This volume focuses on British-American differences in the structure of words and sentences. The first full-length treatment of the topic, it will be of interest to scholars working within the fields of English historical linguistics, language variation and change, and dialectology.

How did grammatical gender in English get replaced by a system dependent on natural gender? How is this related to 'irregular agreement' (she for ships) and 'sexist' language use (generic he) in Modern English? This study, based on extensive corpus data, offers an important historical perspective on these controversial questions.

This volume examines English during the nineteenth century, a period of both stability and change for the language. Considering both structural aspects and sociolinguistics issues, it compares nineteenth-century English with both earlier and later periods, making an important contribution to our overall understanding of the history of the English language.

The late Middle Ages in England saw a flowering of scientific writing in the vernacular, taking English discourse in new directions and establishing new textual genres. This 2004 book examines the sociolinguistic causes and effects of that process, and offers insights into vernacularisation for linguists and historians of science alike.

Apposition in Contemporary English is a detailed discussion of the linguistic relation apposition and its usage in various kinds of speech and writing.

This volume examines English during the nineteenth century, a period of both stability and change for the language. Considering both structural aspects and sociolinguistics issues, it compares nineteenth-century English with both earlier and later periods, making an important contribution to our overall understanding of the history of the English language.

This study explores different types of noun phrase in English, discussing the interaction between their form, meaning and use. Drawing on authentic examples, it addresses the question of how different noun phrases are structured, and how we produce and understand them - shedding light on the nature of linguistic classification.

Standard English has evolved in many ways over the past hundred years. From pronunciation to vocabulary to grammar, this concise survey clearly documents the recent history of Standard English. Essential reading for anyone interested in language change in progress, it will be welcomed by students, researchers and language teachers alike.

This 2007 book traces the development of Irish English from the late Middle Ages to the present day, revealing how it arose, how it has developed, and how it continues to change. Considering issues at all levels of linguistics, it will be invaluable to historical linguists, sociolinguists, syntacticians, and phonologists alike.

Leading scholars trace the development of Standard English, revealing a complex history that challenges the usual textbook accounts. The volume demonstrates that Standard English has no one single ancestor dialect, but is the cumulative result of generations of authoritative writing from many text types.

Speakers of British and American English display some striking differences in their use of grammar. In this detailed survey, John Algeo considers questions such as: *Who lives on a street, and who lives in a street? *Who takes a bath, and who has a bath? *Who says Neither do I, and who says Nor do I? *After 'thank you', who says Not at all and who says You're welcome? *Whose team are on the ball, and whose team isn't? Containing extensive quotations from real-life English on both sides of the Atlantic, collected over the past twenty years, this is a clear and highly organized guide to the differences - and the similarities - between the grammar of British and American speakers. Written for those with no prior knowledge of linguistics, it shows how these grammatical differences are linked mainly to particular words, and provides an accessible account of contemporary English in use.

Jan Firbas discusses the key phenomenon of communicative dynamism, which the sentence elements carry in different degrees, and the distribution of which determines the orientation or perspective of the sentence.

As a result of colonisation, many varieties of English now exist around the world. This 2005 book explores the role of British dialects in both the genesis and subsequent history of postcolonial Englishes, and how it came about that many still reflect non-standard British usage from the distant past.

This study, the first in the series Studies in English Language, is concerned with the functional and communicative foundations of English grammar, and takes as its specific focus the study of infinitival complement clauses. This book will appeal to scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of English language and general linguistics.

New Zealand English is one of the newest varieties of English, and is unique in that its history and development are documented in extensive audio-recordings. On the basis of these recordings, this book examines the linguistic changes New Zealand English has undergone since it was first spoken in the 1850s.

Arguing that cases result from an interplay of cognitive, lexical, and syntactic factors, Professor Schlesinger develops an alternative approach to cases which permits better descriptions of certain syntactic phenomena.

In this comprehensive analysis of personal pronouns in present-day English, Katie Wales examines a wide variety of discourses, texts and varieties of English around the world. Her discussion is illustrated with numerous examples of the usage of personal pronouns and also of reflexives and possessives.

English Corpus Linguistics is a step-by-step guide to creating and analyzing linguistic corpora. The author shows how to collect and computerize data for inclusion in a corpus; how to annotate the data; and how to conduct a linguistic analysis of it once it has been created.

Based on the systematic analysis of large amounts of computer-readable text, this book shows how the English language has been changing in the recent past, often in unexpected and previously undocumented ways. The study is based on a group of matching corpora, known as the 'Brown family' of corpora, supplemented by a range of other corpus materials, both written and spoken, drawn mainly from the later twentieth century. Among the matters receiving particular attention are the influence of American English on British English, the role of the press, the 'colloquialization' of written English, and a wide range of grammatical topics, including the modal auxiliaries, progressive, subjunctive, passive, genitive and relative clauses. These subjects build an overall picture of how English grammar is changing, and the linguistic and social factors that are contributing to this process.

Where do dialects differ from Standard English, and why are they so remarkably resilient? This study argues that commonly used verbs that deviate from Standard English for the most part have a long pedigree. Analysing the language use of over 120 dialect speakers, Lieselotte Anderwald demonstrates that not only are speakers justified historically in using these verbs, systematically these non-standard forms actually make more sense. By constituting a simpler system, they are generally more economical than their Standard English counterparts. Drawing on data collected from the Freiburg English Dialect Corpus (FRED), this innovative and engaging study will be of great interest to students and researchers of English language and linguistics, morphology and syntax.

A revised and expanded edition which has additional chapters and material. A new opening chapter discusses the concept of "grammatically correct English" and various approaches to the writing of grammar books. The book itself describes Standard English and has authentic written and spoken examples.

The book offers a step-by-step approach to the task of describing what is systematic in conversational behaviour. The book is organised as a series of practical exercises, teaching skills such as transcribing verbal interaction and identifying and describing 'special events'.

This book is aimed at linguists and students interested in the history of English, especially from a genre-oriented perspective, and literary scholars interested in style and poetic language. It places binomials - word pairs - in the context of phonology, stylistics, semantics, translation theory and practice in various periods.

What makes the noun phrase 'the man I saw' more complex than 'the man'? Designed for researchers and students interested in questions of language complexity, this book aims to answer that question by exploring variation in more than three billion words of British and American data.

A collection of new case studies by world-renowned and emerging scholars in the field, which explores English syntactic structure, variation, and change, both past and present, methodologically and theoretically. It is ideal reading for scholars and advanced students in English syntax, historical linguistics, linguistic theory and corpus linguistics.

This practical course book explores the development of the language from Old English to the establishment of Standard English. This third edition has been expanded to provide further background information, with a supplementary website and new sections to outline the development of writing hands and provide a brief introduction to palaeography.

Based on authentic English-language material, and backed by the latest statistical methods, this book explores the impact of gender on linguistic choices in English-speaking countries worldwide, considering local social realities. It is essential reading for researchers and advanced students with an interest in language, gender and World Englishes.