Origins of the English LanguageSimon and Schuster, 1975 - 422 pages From Simon & Schuster, Origins of the English Language is Joseph M. Williams' exploration of social and linguistic history. In this book, author Joseph Williams presents a unique social and linguistic history as he explains the ways in which culture, education, class, and race affect language use and what changes in grammar reveal about the changes in our social lives. |
Contents
History and Language | 3 |
The Nature of Language | 11 |
Native and Borrowed | 41 |
From Middle English to Modern English | 65 |
The Establishment of Modern English | 91 |
Creating New Words | 119 |
Semantic Change | 153 |
Semantic Change in Its Social Context | 195 |
The Noun Phrase | 229 |
The Verb Phrase | 259 |
Between Grammar and Phonology | 293 |
Phonological Change | 301 |
From Old English to Modern | 333 |
References | 369 |
| 381 | |
| 411 | |
Common terms and phrases
adjective allophones American English Anglo-Saxon auxiliary verb became become borrowed British common compound consonants context create culture Danelaw dative deep structure deleted derived developed dialect areas Dictionary diphthongs disappeared distinguish earlier Early ModE elements England English Language example fact formal front vowels genitive Germanic grammar Greek human Indo-European inflections intransitive kind Latin letters linguistic London meaning metaphor Middle English Midland MODAL native Norman French noun phrase object occur OE words Old English original past patterns perhaps phonemes phonological plural prefixes preposition prestige dialect probably PROBLEM pronounced pronunciation questions refer relative represent rules Saxons semantic change sense sentences shift singular sixteenth century slang social someone sound changes speakers speech spelling spirants standard stress suffixes syllable symbol TENSE theory tion transformation verb phrase vocabulary voiced voiceless word order writing written York