The New Cambridge History of the English Language: Volume 3

An in-depth volume tracking change in the English language and the role which internal and external factors played throughout history.

This volume examines change in the English language by considering the transmission of English through dictionaries and grammars down to the digital means found today. The chapters investigate various issues in language change, what role internal and external factors played throughout history and the importance of prescriptivism.How language change manifests itself in the history of English is the primary focus of this volume. It considers the transmission of English through dictionaries and grammars down to the digital means found today. The chapters investigate various issues in language change, for instance what role internal and external factors played throughout history. There are several dedicated chapters to change in different areas and on different levels of language, including investigations of the verbal system, of adverbs, of negation and case variation in English as well as more recent instances of syntactic change. It also looks at issues such as style and spelling practices which fed into emergent standard writing, and the complex of linguistic prescriptivism, with chapters on linguistic ideology, phonological standards and the codification of English in dictionaries. The volume concludes with a consideration of networks and communities of practice and the historical enregisterment of linguistic features.