Analysing Older English

Is historical linguistics different in principle from other linguistic research? This book addresses problems encountered in gathering and analysing data from early English, including the incomplete nature of the evidence and the dangers of misinterpretation or over-interpretation. Even so, gaps in the data can sometimes be filled. The volume brings together a team of leading English historical linguists who have encountered such issues first-hand, to discuss and suggest solutions to a range of problems in the phonology, syntax, dialectology and onomastics of older English. The topics extend widely over the history of English, chronologically and linguistically, and include Anglo-Saxon naming practices, the phonology of the alliterative line, computational measurement of dialect similarity, dialect levelling and enregisterment in late Modern English, stress-timing in English phonology and the syntax of Old and early Modern English. The book will be of particular interest to researchers and students in English historical linguistics.

List of figures and maps	p. viii
List of tables	p. x
List of contributors	p. xii
General introduction	p. 1
Metrics and onomastics in older English	p. 5
Introduction to Part I	p. 7
What explanatory metrics has to say about the history of English function words	p. 15
to paere fulan flóde óf paere fulan flode: on becoming a name in Easton and Winchester, Hampshire	p. 28
Notes on some interfaces between place-name material and linguistic theory	p. 35
Writing practices in older English	p. 57
Introduction to Part II	p. 59
Anglian features in late West Saxon prose	p. 63
'ea' in early Middle English: from diphthong to digraph	p. 75
Dialects in older English	p. 119
Introduction to Part III: on the impossibility of historical sociolinguistics	p. 121
Levelling and enregisterment in northern dialects of late Modern English	p. 126
Quantitative historical dialectology	p. 140
Reconstructing syntactic continuity and change in early Modern English regional dialects: the case of who	p. 159
Sound change in older English	p. 185
Introduction to Part IV: when a knowledge of history is a dangerous thing	p. 187
Syllable weight and the weak-verb paradigms in Old English	p. 194
How to weaken one's consonants, strengthen one's vowels and remain English at the same time	p. 213
Degemination in English, with special reference to the Middle English period	p. 232
Syntax in older English	p. 245
Introduction to Part V	p. 247
The status of the postposed 'and-adjective' construction in Old English: attributive or predicative?	p. 251
DO with weak verbs in early Modern English	p. 285
References	p. 306
Index	p. 331
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Analysing Older English

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