Binomials in the History of English

Joanna Kopaczyk is a researcher in Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh and an associate professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. She is a historical linguist with an interest in corpus methods, formulaic language, the history of Scots and historical multilingualism. She has given talks at conferences in Europe, the USA and Australia, and taught on various aspects of the history of English and Scots at universities in Poland, Germany, Finland, and the UK. Hans Sauer is emeritus professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in München and currently also professor at Vistula University, Warsaw. He received a festschrift on his 65th birthday, and the commemorative medal of the faculty of arts at the Masarykova Univerzita v Brnĕ, Czech Republic. He was president of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS) in 2004–5, and a member of the advisory board of the Richard Rawlinson Center (RRC) at the Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo for twenty years.

• 1. Defining and exploring binomials Joanna Kopaczyk and Hans Sauer; Part I. Old English: 2. Pragmatic and stylistic functions of binomials in Old English R. D. Fulk; 3. Fixity and flexibility in Wulfstan's binomials Don Chapman; 4. Binomials, word pairs and variation as a feature of style in Old English poetry Michiko Ogura; 5. Binomials or not? Double glosses in Farman's gloss to the Rushworth Gospels Tadashi Kotake; 6. Lexical pairs and their function in the Eadwine Psalter manuscript Paulina Zagórska; Part II. Middle English: 7. Binomials in Middle English poetry: Havelok, Ywain and Gawain, The Canterbury Tales Ulrike Schenk; 8. Binomials in Caxton's Ovid (Book I) Elisabeth Kubaschewski; 9. Binomial glosses in translation: the case of the Wycliffite Bible Marcin Krygier; Part III. Early Modern English: 10. Binomials in several editions of the Kalender of Shepherdes, an Early Modern English almanac Hanna Rutkowska; 11. Binomials and multinomials in Sir Thomas Elyot's The Boke Named The Gouernour Melanie Sprau; 12. 'I do make and ordayne this my last wyll and testament in maner and forme Folowing': functions of binomials in Early Modern English Protestant wills Ulrich Bach; 13. 'Shee gave Selfe both Soule and body to the Devill': the use of binomials in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 Kathleen L. Doty and Mark Wicklund; 14. Binomials and multinomials in early modern English parliamentary acts Anu Lehto; Part IV. To the Present: 15. Developments in the frequency of English binomials, 1600–2000 Sandra Mollin; 16. Binomials in English novels of the late modern period: fixedness, formulaicity and style Jukka Tyrkkö; 17. On the linguistic and social development of a binomial: the example of to have and to hold Ursula Schaefer.

'Binomials in the History of English contains chapters providing detailed, interesting, and highly informative historical descriptions of binomials in English: fixed structures such as to and fro or knife and fork that are joined by a coordinator. Individual chapters contain descriptions of the form and function of these structures in texts taken from all the major periods of English, ranging from the roles that they played in Old English poetry and law to their stylistic uses in modern English novels.' Charles Meyer, University of Massachusetts, Boston