Table of contents
AcknowledgementsVII
IntroductionEnglish Historical Linguistics at 20 ICEHLs1
Part I.Phonology and morphology
Chapter 1.Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law: Towards a unified phonetic account15
Chapter 2.The foot in the history of English: Challenges to metrical coherence41
Chapter 3.Ambiguity resolution and the evolution of homophones in English61
Chapter 4.The threshold of productivity and the ‘irregularization’ of verbs in Early Modern English91
Part II.Syntax
Chapter 5.The reanalysis of VO in the history of English: Evidence for a language-internal account115
Chapter 6.The role of (the avoidance of) centre embedding in the change from OV to VO in English137
Chapter 7.Syntactic changes in verbal clauses and noun phrases from 1500 onwards163
Chapter 8.Prepositions in Early Modern English argument structure and beyond201
Chapter 9.Should with non-past reference: A corpus-based diachronic study225
Part III.Semantics and pragmatics
Chapter 10.Shifting responsibility in passing information: Stance-taking in Sir Thomas Bodley’s diplomatic correspondence245
Chapter 11.Theatrical practices and grammatical standardization in eighteenth-century Britain: you was and you were263
Chapter 12.Towards a companionate marriage in Late Modern England? Two critical episodes in Mary Hamilton’s courtship letters to John Dickenson287
Chapter 13.On the development of OE swā to ModE so and related changes in an atypical group of demonstratives309
Index345
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