Analysing Older English

David Denison is Smith Professor of English Language and Medieval Literature in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester. Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester. Chris McCully is Managing Director of the Graduate School for the Humanities at the Rijksuniversiteit, Groningen. Emma Moore is a Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at the University of Sheffield.

• General introduction David Denison, Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, Chris McCully and Emma Moore, with Donka Minkova; Part I. Metrics and Onomastics in Older English: 1. Introduction Chris McCully and David Denison; 2. What explanatory metrics has to say about the history of English function words Geoffrey Russom; 3. To þære fulan flóde óf þære fulan flode: on becoming a name in Easton and Winchester, Hampshire Richard Coates; 4. Notes on some interfaces between place-name material and linguistic theory Peter Kitson; Part II. Writing Practices in Older English: 5. Introduction Chris McCully; 6. Anglian features in late West Saxon prose R. D. Fulk; 7. 'ea' in early Middle English: from diphthong to digraph Roger Lass and Margaret Laing; Part III. Dialects in Older English: 8. Introduction: on the impossibility of historical sociolinguistics Emma Moore; 9. Levelling and enregisterment in northern dialects of late modern English Joan Beal; 10. Quantitative historical dialectology April McMahon and Warren Maguire; 11. Reconstructing syntactic continuity and change in early modern English regional dialects: the case of who Terttu Nevalainen; Part IV. Sound Change in Older English: 12. Introduction: when a knowledge of history is a dangerous thing Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero; 13. Syllable weight and the weak-verb paradigms in Old English Donka Minkova; 14. How to weaken one's consonants, strengthen one's vowels, and remain English at the same time Nikolaus Ritt; 15. Degemination in English, with special reference to the Middle English period Derek Britton; Part V. Syntax in Older English: 16. Introduction David Denison; 17. The status of the postposed 'and-adjective' construction in Old English: attributive or predicative? Olga Fischer; 18. DO with weak verbs in early modern English Anthony Warner.

'This volume comprises a wide-ranging collection of papers on historical linguistics. … [it] continues an approach to historical data of which Richard Hogg would have been proud.' Phillip Wallage, Journal of English Language and Linguistics