The History of English / Historical Outlines from Sound to Text

This series of books reprints articles from the successful English Historical Linguistics: An International Handbook (HSK 34.1 and 34.2) in a convenient paperback set suitable for use in the classroom or by scholars. While the first volume provides an overview of the history of English, the second to fourth volumes focus on individual periods and the final volume covers language variation from an historical perspective.

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This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the history of English, organized by linguistic level, and it explores key questions and debates. Individual chapters are written by recognized experts in the field. The volume begins with a re-evaluation of the concept of periodization in the history of English. This is followed by overviews of changes in the traditional areas of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics as well as chapters covering areas less often treated in histories of English, including prosody, idioms and fixed expressions, pragmatics and discourse, onomastics, orthography, style/register/text types, and standardization.