Research trends
Although this website is primarily intended as an introduction to the history of English for students, it is nonetheless useful to give some indication of what the current research trends in this field are like. Some students may be interested in looking more closely at a particular aspect of the history of English and so tips about who is who in certain sub-areas could be useful. The information below is intended as a guide and not an exhaustive description of present-day research. Still, the outline of key areas should convey some idea of what is of interest to scholars in the field today.
Collections with contributions on various aspects of language change, usually with English data, have appeared with a certain regularity, see Hickey (ed) (2002, 2003). Jones and Singh (2005) is a recent monograph on the subject.
By far the most productive scholars were those on the continent. The Austrian Karl Luick, who worked in Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th century produced a monumental Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache [Historical grammar of the English language] (1914-1940) which has remained a classic in its genre as has A modern English grammar on historical principles (7 vols., 1909-49) by the great Danish scholar Otto Jespersen (1860-1943).
The larger the body of scholary work became the greater the specialisation which became apparent. Studies of historical English which appeared in the early to mid 20th century were often restricted to a period, e.g. Alisdair Campbell Old English Grammar (1959), Ferdinand Mossé A handbook of Middle English (translated from the French original Manuel du moyen anglais, 1953) or Eric J. Dobson’s English pronunciation 1500-1700 (1968). Nonetheless, many overviews of the language continued to appear and some of these have been repeatedly revised and reprinted, testifying to their continuing popularity, e.g. Albert C. Baugh, and Thomas Cable A history of the English language. 5th edition, 2002, Thomas Pyles and John Algeo The origins and development of the English language. 4th edition, 1993 or Barbara Strang A history of English, 1970 (original edition). In this context one should mention the monumental overview of historical syntax offered in Visser (1963-73).
The turn of the millennium has seen several new studies of which one could mention the single-volume treatments of the history of English by Laurel Brinton and Leslie Arnovick (2005), Elly van Gelderen (2006) and the edited volumes by Lynda Mugglestone (ed., 2006) and Richard Hogg and David Denison (eds, 2006). Further, single-volume paperback overviews have also appeared, see Barber (2000), Bragg (2003) and Crystal (2004). In a more popular one has surveys like McCrum et al. (2002) and Bryson ().
Collections of articles giving overviews of aspects of English and its history have also appeared or will do so shortly, see Aarts and McMahon (eds, 2006), van Kemenade and Los (eds, 2006), Momma and Matto (2007) as well as Brinton and Bergs (eds, forthcoming).
Many studies on late modern English appeared in the 1990s reflecting a concern with the centuries immediately preceding modern English. Of these studies one could mention the new edition of Charles Barber (1976) in 1997 and the more recent Richard Bailey (1996) as well as Manfred Görlach (1991, 1999, 2001), Terttu Nevalainen (2004) and Joan Beal (2004). Norman Blake (2002) and Jonathan Hope (2003) are specific studies of Shakespeare’s grammar.
The 1990s also saw two large one volume guides to the English language with McArthur (1992) and Crystal (1995), the former with a broad brief and the latter with a specific emphasis on the history of the language. It also saw the introduction of a journal specifically dealing with the analysis of the English language, generally from a diachronic perspective: English Language and Linguistics, 1997- (Cambridge: University Press).
The insights from sociolinguistics – in various forms – have been applied to the history of English, in an early study by Suzanne Romaine (1982) and later in such works as Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (2003). The latter study uses a corpus of historical personal correspondence as its basis. This data type has been increasingly the subject of investigations, see the full-length study in Susan Fitzmaurice (2002) and the volume edited by Terttu Nevalainen and Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen (2004). See also the contributions in J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds, 2002).
See the dedicated module Sources for the history of English for more details and for a list of presently available corpora. See also the large-scale publication Karen P. Corrigan, Hermann Moisl and Joan Beal (eds, 2007).
This field has been served well by general surveys such as those by David Denison (1993), Olga Fischer et al. (2001) and Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas and Anthony Warner (eds) (2001). Studies of particular sections of English syntax can be found in Cynthia Allen (1999) and Anthony Warner (1993). A handbook with articles covering all aspects of the historical grammar of English is available as Aans van Kemenade and Bettylou Los (eds) 2006.
Grammaticalisation has been studied with reference to a wide variety of languages, e.g. many African languages. The history of English has been examined from this perspective above all by Elizabeth Traugott, initially in such studies as Traugott (1989), later in book-length treatments such as Paul Hopper and Elizabeth Closs Traugott (2003, 2nd edition), Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Richard B. Dasher (2002), Laurel Brinton and Elizabeth Closs Traugott (2005). Other treatments in a similar vein are available, e.g. Olga Fischer, Anette Rosenbach and Dieter Stein (2000).
A full third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary – the single most reliable source of diachronic information on English vocabulary – is being prepared by Oxford University Press. There is a dedicated website which includes updates on words which have already been processed in advance of the publication of the third edition: www.oed.com
Overview articles can be found in Traugott (2000) and Traugott (2004). Among the books dealing with this topic are Laurel J. Brinton (1996), Andreas H. Jucker (ed) (1995) and Fitzmaurice and Taavitsainen (eds) (2007).
Early scholarship on the history of English
The foundation for research into the history of English was laid by scholars in the early 19th century who were concerned with reconstructing the proto-language for the Indo-European language family. The techniques they developed came to be applied to individual languages in this group and by the latter half of the 19th century researchers had begun to systematically describe the development of English from its beginnings after the arrival of the first Germanic settlers in England in the mid 5th century. The best known author working on the history of English in England at this time was Henry Sweet (1845-1912) who in 1874 published a History of English sounds and later a grammar and text selection for Old English (then termed Anglo-Saxon).
New overviews of the history of English
In the 1980s and 1990s a number of studies of the history of English appeared which strove to apply the insights of modern linguistics to this subject. The main work here is the many-volume Cambridge History of the English Language (ed. Richard Hogg). Single volume studies often with innovative approaches are Richard Bailey (1991), Norman Blake (1996), Barbara Fennell (1998), Roger Lass (1987), Roger Lass (1994), Jeremy Smith (1996) (see references below for full details). More compact textbooks have also appeared, e.g. Culpeper (1997). Overviews of individual periods of English have also appeared, e.g. Marsden (ed., 2004)
Sociolinguistics and language change
The development of sociolinguistics in the 20th century is due primarily to the pioneering work of William Labov who in the 1960s carried out seminal studies (above all, that published as Labov 1966) which provided the methodological framework for virtually every sociolinguistic investigation since. Labov has increasingly been concerned with the application of insights from sociolinguistics to the history of English (see Labov 1981) and many linguists have followed this same path, much to the benefit of scholarship in the field.
Social networks and language change
An important extension of sociolinguistic principles took place in the work of James and Lesley Milroy who applied the notion of network (from sociology) to linguistics, first in synchronic investigations, later in diachronic (historical) ones. Networks are the connections which individuals have with others in their social surroundings. These connections are maintained, usually in working class communities by the use of vernacular linguistic norms, generally in sharp contrast to the standard of the language in question, a form which is found supraregionally and used by speakers who do not share a mutual social network.
New sources for the history of English
There has been a general switchover for the data on which historical investigations are based from printed records to digitally prepared data (often with such printed records as their source). The advantage of using electronic data is that much larger amounts of material can be scanned for particular features and so, in principle, offer a sounder basis on which to make statements about change in the history of the language. Such sets of data are known as corpora (plural of corpus, “body of data”). Many have been compiled since the early 1990s and their number is increasing every year. Originally associated with certain universities, such as that in Helsinki for the history of English, corpora are now produced throughout the world. Such corpora often contain data hitherto unavailable to the academic public, e.g. the records of the court at the Old Bailey which are being compiled into a corpus at the University of Sheffield.
Historical syntax
The study of syntax has occupied a central position in linguistics since the mid 20th century, not least because of the great strides made in linguistic theory since the introduction of generative grammar in the late 1950s by Noam Chomsky. Many linguists have applied the insights of syntactic theory to the study of the history of English, not necessarily by strictly applying a current model of generative grammar but by working within a theoretically-aware framework in which they have sought to reach linguistically significant generalisations about language change and specific shifts in English.
Grammaticalisation and lexicalisation
A particular type of language change is grammaticalisation where lexical elements lose their concrete meanings and more and more adopt a grammatical function in a language. Lexicalisation is the mirror image of this, i.e. it deals with the shift from grammatical to lexical status for certain words which accrue specific, independent meanings.
Vocabulary
The interface between vocabulary and grammar has been dealt with in the previous section. Other publications of recent date deal with the interaction of vocabulary with phonology, e.g. Robert Stockwell and Donka Minkova (2001), or that of vocabulary and lexicography, e.g. Hüllen (1999). In addition, a number of publications have looked at the structure of English vocabulary, frequently with a consideration of the historical background, e.g. Geoffrey Hughes (2000), Heidi Harley (2003). The two books by Kate Burridge (2004, 2005) are concerned with disputes surrounding the lexicon, especially vernacular vocabulary. The store of words found in varieties throughout the anglophone world is the topic of Stephen Gramley (2001) and is also dealt with in Tom McArthur (2002).
Historical pragmatics
Among the new orientations in historical linguistics of the past two decades is that of historical pragmatics to which a journal is now dedicated: Historical Pragmatics, 2000- (Amsterdam: John Benjamins). Through the publication of this journal the linguists Andreas Jucker and Irma Taatvisainen have been especially instrumental in disseminating insights from this field.
Development of the standard
The data for nearly all the investigations listed above derive in the main from the English language as attested in England. There has been criticism of this fact by several linguists who see in the concentration on England, a covert prescriptivism as if the history of English was the domain of English English. Discussion of such attitudes are to be found in James and Lesley Milroy (1991) and, by the provision of contrasting scenarios, in Richard Watts and Peter Trudgill (eds) (2001). The issue of standards – deliberately set in the plural – is a central theme in Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts (eds) (1999) and in Linn and McLelland (eds, 2002). The historical background to the rise of standard English in England and the attendant increase in prescriptivism is treated in such books as Cheshire and Stein (eds) (1997), Tony Crowley (1989, 1991) and Mugglestone (2003, 2nd edition), see also Hickey (ed., forthcoming, a). Rosina Lippi-Green (1997) looks at similar subject matter within the American context.
Late modern English period
In the past ten years of so, increasing attention has been paid to the late modern English period (1700 to 1900). Although the linguistic changes in this period may seem slight compared to the Old and Middle English periods, there were nonetheless significant changes which led to a clearer profile emerging for standards forms of southern British English. A full-length studies of the period can be found in Beal (2004) and in Jones (2002, 2005) (the latter for pronunciation). Sociolinguistic issues of the 18th century are dealt with in many books, e.g. Mugglestone (2003, 2nd edition) and Görlach (2001). Here it is the development of a British standard of English and reactions to this which form the focus. Grammar-writing is receiving special attention in this context, see the contributions in Tieken-Boon van Ostade (ed.) 2008. Other volumes which deal with key issues of the late modern period are Dossena and Jones (eds) (2003) and Perez-Guerra et al (eds) (2007). These are volumes of proceedings from the Late Modern English conference series.
Transportation of English overseas
The development of overseas varieties of English and their relationship to regional dialects of British, Irish and Scottish English is a further branch of the history of the English language which has been examined in depth recently, see the volumes on English overseas (Burchfield, ed. 1994) and on English in North America (Algeo, ed., 2001) in the Cambridge History of the English Language. See also the contributions in Raymond Hickey (ed., 2004) and the views put forward in Trudgill (2004). Issues concerning English in a global context has been served well by many book-length publications and there are quality journals dedicated to this subject, such as English World Wide, 1980- (Amsterdam: John Benjamins), with an accompanying book series, and World Englishes, 1981- (Oxford: Blackwell). More information on varieties of English can be found in the sections under the menu Varieties on the desktop.
Language contact
References