A new book from Routledge's Critical Concepts in Linguistics series, History of the English Language is a four-volume collection covering key linguistic themes in English history's phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics.
1. William Labov, 'Triggering Events,' in Susan Fitzmaurice and Donka Minkova, Studies in English Language History IV (Mouton de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 9–54.
2. Otto Jespersen, A Modern English Grammar I (George Allen & Unwin, 1909), pp. 231–47.
3. Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, 'The Evolution of Modern English Vowel System,' MIT Press, 1967, pp. 249–89.
4. Robert Stockwell, 'Perseverance in the English Vowel Shift,' in Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Historical Phonology (Mouton, 1978), 337–48.
Part 2: Consonants shifts
5. Donka Minkova, 'Old English phonemic contrasts? 'English linguistics, 2011, 15, 1, 31–59.
6. Nikolaus Ritt, 'How to Weaken One's Consonants, Strengthen One's Vowels and Remain English at the Same Time,' David Denison et al. (eds.), Analysing Older English (Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 213–31.
Part 3: Meter, Stress
7. Chris McCully and Richard Hogg, 'Old English Stress Account, Linguistics Journal, 1990, 26, 315–39.
8. Manfred Markus, 'From Stress-Timing to Syllable-Timing: Changes in Late Middle English and Early Modern English' in Dieter Kastovsky, Studies in Early Modern English (Mouton, 1994), pp. 187–203.
Part 4: Morphosyntatic Anglovers
9. Benedikt Szmrecsanyi and Bernd Kortmann, 'Vernacular Universals and Anglovers in Typological Perspective,' in Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto (eds.), Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence of English and Beyond Varieties (Routledge, 2009), pp. 33–53.
Part 5: Word-forming morphology derivative
10. 10. Dieter Kastovsky, in Sylvia Adamson et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (John Benjamins, 1990), pp. 205–23.
11. 11. Laurie Bauer, 'When is a Noun+Noun compound in English? 'English linguistics, 1998, 2, 65–86.
Part 6: Inflective Morphology
12. 12. Lukas Pietsch, Variable Grammar: Northern English Dialects (Niemeyer, 2005), pp. 45–62.
13. 13. Aditi Lahiri, 'Dental Preterites in English History,' K. Hanson, S. Inkelas (eds.), Word Nature: Paul Kiparsky Honor Studies (MIT Press, 2009), pp. 507–25.
14. Fourteen. Natalie Schilling-Estes and Walt Wolfram, 'Convergent Explanation and Alternative Regularization Patterns: Were/Weren't Leveling in a Vernacular English Variety,' 1994, 6, 273–302.
15. Fifteen. Tracy Crouch, 'The Morphological Status of Old English Ge-,' American Journal, 1995, 7, 2, 165–78.
Volume 2: Syntax
Part 7: Clause Word and Nominal Phrase
16. 16. Charles Fries, 'Developing Word-Order Structural Use in Modern English,' Language, 1940, 16, 3, 199–208.
17. Seventeen. Robert Stockwell, in Charles Li (ed.), Mechanisms of Syntactic Change (University of Texas Press, 1977), pp. 291–314.
18. 18. Susan Pintzuk, 'Verb Seconding in Old English,' 1993, 10, 1, 5–35.
19. 19. Theresa Biberauer and Ian Roberts, 'Cascading Parameter Changes,' in Thórhallur Eythórsson (ed.), John Benjamins, 2008, pp. 79–113.
20. 20. Dagmar Haumann, 'Old English Adjectives,' English and Linguistics, 2010, 14, 1, 53–81.
21. 21. Johanna L. Wood, 'Demonstratives and Possessives: From Old English to Present-Day English,' in Elisabeth Stark, Elisabeth Leiss, and Werner Abraham (eds.), Nominal Determination, pp. 339–61.
Part 8: Grammar Words
22. 22. Traugott, 'Diachronic Syntax and Generative Grammar,' Language, 1965, 41, 402–15.
23. 23. Xavier Dekeyser, 'WH- and That: Two Competing Strategies in English Relative Clause Formation History, Leuvense Bijdragen, 1996, 85, 3–4, 293–302.
24. 24. Willem Koopman, 'Another Clitics in OE, Philological Society Transactions, 1997, 95, 1, 73–93.
25. 25. Elly van Gelderen in Terje Lohndal (ed.), In Search of Universal Grammar: From Old Norse to Zoque (Benjamins, 2013), pp. 195–218.
26. 26. The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and Language Faculty (OUP, 2011), pp. 156–67.
27. 27. Otto Jespersen, 'Negation,' A Modern English Grammar V, 1940, pp. 426–67.
28. 28. Lieselotte Anderwald, 'British English Dialects' Negative Concord, Yoko Iyeiri (ed.), Aspects of English Negation (John Benjamins, 2005), pp. 113–37.
29. 29. Lynn Sims, 'Periphrasis, Replacement and Renewal: Onginnan, Beginnan, Start,' Iren Hegedus and Dora Podor (eds.), Studies in English Historical Linguistics (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013).
Part 9: voice and argument changes
30. 30. David Lightfoot, 'Syntactic Change and Autonomy Thesis, Linguistics Journal, 1977, 13, 2, 191–216.
31. 31. Olga Fischer and Frederike van der Leek, 'Old English Impersonal Construction Demise, Journal of Linguistics, 1983, 19, 2, 337–68.
Volume III: Semantics, Pragmatism, Corpora
Part 10: Weekly Change
32. 32. The Development of English Aspectual Systems: Aspectualizers and Post-Verbal Particles (1988), pp. 185–234.
33. 33. Remus Gergel, 'Rather: on a Modal Cycle,' published in Elly van Gelderen, Cyclical Change (John Benjamins, 2009), pp. 242–64.
34. 34. Regine Eckardt, What's Going to Happen, Meaning Grammaticalization Change (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 91–127.
35. 35. Patrick Duffley and Pierre Larrivee, 'Exploring the Relationship Between Determiner Some's Qualitative and Quantitative Uses, 2012, 16, 1, 131–49.
36. 36. Traugott, 'On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings in English: An Example of Subjectification in Semantic Change,' Language, 1989, 65, 1, 31–55.
37. 37. Elly van Gelderen, 'Where did Merge go? 'Linguistics, 2008, 287–300.
Part 11: Structure of information
38. 38. Bettelou Los, 'Word-Second Loss and Switch from Bounded to Unbounded Systems,' in Anneli Meurman-Solin et al. (eds.), Information Structure and Syntactic Change in English History (OUP, 2012), pp. 21–46.
39. 39. Ann Taylor and Susan Pintzuk, 'The Interaction of Syntactic Change and Information Status Effects in Changing from OV to VO in English,' 2011, 10, 71–94.
Part 12: Address politeness and pronouns
40. 40. Andreas Jucker, 'Positive and Negative Face as Descriptive Categories in English History,' Historical Pragmatics Journal, 2011, 12, 1/2, 18–197.
41. 41. Merja Stenroos, 'Pronoun of Piers Plowman: Authorial and Scribal Usage, Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 2010, 11, 1, 1–31.
13. Pragmatic markers
42. 42. Elly van Gelderen, 'The Syntax of Mood Particles in English History, 2002, 22, 1/2, 301–31.
43. 43. Ignacio Palacios Martinez, 'It Ain't Nothing to Do with My School: Variation and Pragmatic Uses of Ain't in English Teenage Language, English Studies, 2010, 91, 5, 548–66.
44. 44. Sali Tagliamonte, Who? How? Like how? What's it? Discourse Markers in English Speaking Youth, Journal of Pragmatics, 2005, 37, 11, 1896–915.
45. 45. Egil Breivik, 'English Sentence Adverbials in a Discourse and Cognitive Perspective,' English Studies, 2011, 92, 6, 679–92.
Part 14: Corpus and Studies
46. 46. Elizabeth Traugott and Susan Pintzuk, 'Coding the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose to Investigate the Syntax-Pragmatics Interface,' in Susan Fitzmaurice and Donka Minkova (eds.), English Language History Studies IV (Mouton de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 61–80.
47. 47. Merja Kytö, 'Collocational and Idiomatic Aspects of Verbs in Early Modern English,' in Laurel Brinton and Minoji Akimoto, History of English (John Benjamins, 1999), pp. 167–206.
Volume IV: Sociology
Part 15: Regional change
48. 48. Joseph Crowley, 'Old English Dialects Study, 1986, 2, 97–112.
49. 49. Patricia Cukor-Avila, 'The Grammatical History of African-American and White Vernaculars in the South,' in Stephen Nagle and Sara Sanders (eds.), Southern United States English (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 82–105.
50. Fifty-seven. Walt Wolfram, 'Reexamining African American English: Evidence from Isolated Communities,' Language, 2003, 79, 2, 282–316.
Part 16: Social change
51. 51. Peter Trudgill, 'Norwich Revisited,' 1988, 9, 33–49.
52. Fifty-two. William Labov, 'Sound Change's Social Motivation, Word, 1966, 19, 273–309.
53. Fifty-three. Patrick-André Mather, 'New York City's Social Stratification: Department Store Study Revisited, Journal of English Linguistics, 2012, 40, 4, 338–56.
54. Fifty-four. D'Arcy Alexandra and Sali Tagliamonte, 'Prestige, Accommodation and the Legacy of Relative Who,' 2010, 39, 3, 383–410.
55. Fifty-five. Penelope Eckert, 'Social Polarization and Linguistic Variant Choice,' in Eckert, New Ways of Analyzing Sound Change (Academic Press), pp. 213–32.
Part 17: Contact English
56. Fifty-six. Nicole Domingue, 'Middle English: Another Croatian? 'Creole Journal, 1977, 1, 89–100.
57. Fifty-seven. Markku Filppula in Marina Dossena, Richard Dury, and Maurizio Gotti (eds.), English Historical Linguistics (John Benjamins, 2008), pp. 153–70.
58. Fifty-eight. Theo Vennemann, 'Atlantis Semitica: Structural features