The stories of English

Crystal, David

The stories of English - London : Penguin, 2005. - vi, 584 pages : illustrations

Introduction --
The standard story --
The real story --
The origins of Old English --
The Old English dialects --
Early lexical diversity --
Stylistic variation in Old English --
The transition to Middle English --
A trilingual nation --
Lexical invasions --
Evolving variation --
A dialect age --The emerging standard --
Printing and its consequences --
Early modern English preoccupations --
Linguistic daring --
Dialect fallout --
Stabilizing disorder --
Standard rules --
New horizons --
Lingusitic life goes on --
And dialect life goes on --
Times a-changin'.

Crystal offers the reader with not only the authoritative history of standard English, but also narrates the stories of the dialects of English, showing how they influenced the development of standard English. Numerous panels describe word histories and look in detail at specific idiosyncracies

9780141015934 0141015934


English language -- History
English language.

427 / CRY

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