ENGL 3040: The History of the English Language

Seth Lerer tells a masterful history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem. Many have written about the evolution of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, but only Lerer situates these developments within the larger history of English, America, and literature. This edition features a new chapter on the influence of biblical translation and an epilogue on the relationship of English speech to writing.

This book presents the history of English from its obscure Indo-European roots to its twenty-first-century position as the world's first language.

When did English become American? What distinctive qualities made it American? What role have America's democratizing impulses, and its vibrantly heterogeneous speakers, played in shaping our language and separating it from the mother tongue? A wide-ranging account of American English, Richard Bailey's Speaking American investigates the history and continuing evolution of our language from the sixteenth century to the present.

The English language is now accepted as the global lingua franca of the modern age. But how did it evolve? How did a language spoken originally be a few thousand Anglo-Saxons become one used by over a quarter of the human race? The Stories of English is a groundbreaking and entertaining history of the language by David Crystal, the world-renowned writer and linguist. Crystal turns the history of English on its head and provides a startlingly original view of where the richness, creativity, and diversity of the language truly lies in the accents and dialects of nonstandard English users all over the world.

Packed with fascinating examples of changes in the English language over time, this entertaining book explores the origin of words and place names, the differences between British and American English, and the apparent eccentricities of the English spelling system. Amusingly written yet deeply instructive, it will be enjoyed by anyone involved in studying the English language and its history, as well as anyone interested in how and why languages change.

Contemporary Linguistics is one of the most comprehensive introductions to the fundamentals of linguistics, balancing engaging aspects of language study with solid coverage of the basics. Up-to-date scholarship, a direct approach, and a lucid writing style make it appealing to instructors and beginning students alike and a resource that many students continue to use beyond the classroom.

Historical linguistics - the study of language change - is a major field in linguistics. With its long history and numerous subfields of its own, historical linguistics provides challenges to both beginning students and scholars not specialized in this field. This glossary meets these challenges by providing accessible and widely representative definitions, discussion, and examples of key terms and concepts used in the field.

The Linguistics Encyclopedia has been thoroughly revised and updated and a substantial new introduction, which forms a concise history of the field, has been added. The volume offers comprehensive coverage of the major and subsidiary fields of linguistic study.