The Handbook of the History of English

663 Pages·2006·4.49 MB·English

THOA01 03/02/2006 11:58 AM Page i
The Handbook of the History of English
THOA01 03/02/2006 11:58 AM Page ii
Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics
This outstanding multi-volume series covers all the major subdisciplines within linguistics
today and, when complete, will offer a comprehensive survey of linguistics as a whole.
Already published:
The Handbook of Child Language The Handbook of Historical Linguistics
Edited by Paul Fletcher and Edited by Brian D. Joseph and
Brian MacWhinney Richard D. Janda
The Handbook of Phonological Theory The Handbook of Language and Gender
Edited by John A. Goldsmith Edited by Janet Holmes and
Miriam Meyerhoff
The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory
Edited by Shalom Lappin The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition
Edited by Catherine J. Doughty and
The Handbook of Sociolinguistics
Michael H. Long
Edited by Florian Coulmas
The Handbook of Bilingualism
The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences
Edited by Tej K. Bhatia and
Edited by William J. Hardcastle and
William C. Ritchie
John Laver
The Handbook of Pragmatics
The Handbook of Morphology Edited by Laurence R. Horn and Gregory
Edited by Andrew Spencer and Ward
Arnold Zwicky
The Handbook of Applied Linguistics
The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics Edited by Alan Davies and Catherine Elder
Edited by Natsuko Tsujimura
The Handbook of Speech Perception
The Handbook of Linguistics Edited by David B. Pisoni and
Edited by Mark Aronoff and Robert E. Remez
Janie Rees-Miller
The Blackwell Companion to Syntax,
The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Volumes I–V
Theory Edited by Martin Everaert and Henk van
Edited by Mark Baltin and Chris Collins Riemsdijk
The Handbook of Discourse Analysis The Handbook of the History of English
Edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Edited by Ans van Kemenade and
Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton Bettelou Los
The Handbook of Language Variation and The Handbook of World Englishes
Change Edited by Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru,
Edited by J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Cecil L. Nelson
and Natalie Schilling-Estes
THOA01 03/02/2006 11:58 AM Page iii
The Handbook of
the History of English
Edited by
Ans van Kemenade
and Bettelou Los
THOA01 03/02/2006 11:58 AM Page iv
© 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
The right of Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los to be identified as
the Authors of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in
accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act
1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The handbook of the history of English / edited by Ans van Kemenade
and Bettelou Los.
p. cm. — (Blackwell handbooks in linguistics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-631-23344-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-631-23344-X (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. English language—
History. I. Kemenade, Ans van, 1954– II. Los, Bettelou. III. Series.
PE1075.H335 2006
420.9—dc22
2005033628
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/12pt Palatino
by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom
by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall
The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate
a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from
pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices.
Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board
used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards.
For further information on
Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:
www.blackwellpublishing.com
THOA01 03/02/2006 11:59 AM Page v
Contents
Editors’ Introduction vii
Notes on Contributors x
Part I Approaches and Issues 1
1 Change for the Better? Optimality Theory versus History 3
April McMahon
2 Cuing a New Grammar 24
David W. Lightfoot
3 Variation and the Interpretation of Change in Periphrastic Do 45
Anthony Warner
4 Evolutionary Models and Functional-Typological Theories of
Language Change 68
William Croft
Part II Words: Derivation and Prosody 93
5 Old and Middle English Prosody 95
Donka Minkova
6 Prosodic Preferences: From Old English to Early Modern English 125
Paula Fikkert, Elan B. Dresher, and Aditi Lahiri
7 Typological Changes in Derivational Morphology 151
Dieter Kastovsky
8 Competition in English Word Formation 177
Laurie Bauer
Part III Inflectional Morphology and Syntax 199
9 Case Syncretism and Word Order Change 201
Cynthia L. Allen
THOA01 03/02/2006 11:59 AM Page vi
vi Contents
10 Discourse Adverbs and Clausal Syntax in Old and Middle
English 224
Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los
11 The Loss of OV Order in the History of English 249
Susan Pintzuk and Ann Taylor
12 Category Change and Gradience in the Determiner System 279
David Denison
Part IV Pragmatics 305
13 Pathways in the Development of Pragmatic Markers in English 307
Laurel Brinton
14 The Semantic Development of Scalar Focus Modifiers 335
Elizabeth Closs Traugott
15 Information Structure and Word Order Change: The Passive as
an Information-rearranging Strategy in the History of English 360
Elena Seoane
Part V Pre- and Post-colonial Varieties 393
16 Old English Dialectology 395
Richard Hogg
17 Early Middle English Dialectology: Problems and Prospects 417
Margaret Laing and Roger Lass
18 How English Became African American English 452
Shana Poplack
19 Historical Change in Synchronic Perspective: The Legacy of
British Dialects 477
Sali A. Tagliamonte
20 The Making of Hiberno-English and Other “Celtic Englishes” 507
Markku Filppula
Part VI Standardization and Globalization 537
21 Eighteenth-century Prescriptivism and the Norm of Correctness 539
Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade
22 Historical Sociolinguistics and Language Change 558
Terttu Nevalainen
23 Global English: From Island Tongue to World Language 589
Suzanne Romaine
Appendix: Useful Corpora for Research in English Historical
Linguistics 609
Index 612
THOA01 03/02/2006 11:59 AM Page vii
Editors’ Introduction
The format of this Handbook is not a traditional one, as will immediately be
clear from the Contents list. Its chapters are not arranged chronologically,
moving from Old to Middle to Modern English, or linguistically, moving from
phonology to morphology to syntax. We realized from the start that it was
going to be impossible to achieve any degree of exhaustiveness in the choice
of topics in the format of a single volume, especially in the case of a language
whose history is as well studied as that of English – a fact borne out by
the existence of the Cambridge History of the English Language (CHEL),
which requires six volumes with virtually book-length chapters to give com-
prehensive survey treatment of the work done on relevant aspects of the
English language. We decided to concentrate instead on other typical hand-
book functions: those of providing shortcuts to current thinking for readers
who want to become familiar with subjects that are outside their own areas of
interest, and of providing a “state of the art” overview of current research. This
led us to concentrate on the kind of work which is grounded in philological
expertise and care but which is also informed by recent theoretical advances
and issues in the study of English historical linguistics and of historical lin-
guistics and language change more generally. The term “theoretical advances”
should be taken in a broad sense here, including theoretical models of linguistic
competence and language use, the theory and methodology of social and
regional variation in language, quantitative corpus-driven work and corpus-
making, or a combination of any of the above. Given this chosen slant of the
Handbook, we also specifically requested a number of our contributors to go
beyond the survey approach that is so readily associated with handbooks,
and to try as much as possible to present chapters in which the work for
which they are best known is argued and illustrated, while also presenting
new material and suggesting new avenues of research. This has led to a fairly
unorthodox chapter division.
The first part presents a discussion of four very different approaches to the
study of the history of language change in the context of the English language.
THOA01 03/02/2006 11:59 AM Page viii
viii Editors’ Introduction
They all represent ways of researching language change that have become
part of the research agenda relatively recently: April McMahon evaluates the
viability of Optimality Theory for historical work in English phonology. David
W. Lightfoot presents the case for approaching syntactic change from the per-
spective of the language learner, and highlights the role of grammatical cues
in the acquisition of the grammatical rule system by new generations of learn-
ers. Anthony Warner presents a theoretically informed variationist approach
which casts new light on the classical problem of the diffusion of a new syn-
tactic feature, in this case that of periphrastic doin early Modern English. Finally,
William Croft discusses evolutionary models in combination with functional-
typological theories as they apply to the phenomenon of language change.
The second part presents historical work done at the level of the word. The
chapters by Donka Minkova, and Paula Fikkert, Elan B. Dresher, and Aditi Lahiri
present work done in prosody, an exciting area of research which brings
together changes in phonology and morphology. The chapters by Dieter
Kastovsky and Laurie Bauer provide overviews of historical word formation.
The chapters in Part III, by Cynthia L. Allen, Ans van Kemenade and
Bettelou Los, Susan Pintzuk and Ann Taylor, and David Denison, are concerned
with various aspects of word order change, with the perennial problem of the
interaction between inflectional change and syntactic change, and with the prob-
lem of how to model this interaction. They also illustrate the value of corpus
work in historical syntax. The use of corpora in English diachronic syntax is
an excellent, and possibly unique, example of how formal theories and per-
formance data can be brought together to provide us with a better understanding
of the syntax of early English and the phenomenon of syntactic change.
In Part IV, “Pragmatics,” the chapters by Laurel Brinton and Elizabeth Closs
Traugott represent approaches that focus on how word-meanings may change
in non-arbitrary ways. Particularly interesting is the development of degree
adverbs, focus modifiers and pragmatic markers, which have acquired these
special functions via pragmatic implicatures and inferences that can be
deduced from the uses of lexemes in specific constructions. Elena Seoane’s chap-
ter discusses the interaction of syntax and information structure that is evident
in the changing role of the passive construction in the history of English.
The chapters in Part V, “Pre- and Post-colonial Varieties,” discuss regional
variation and the origin of varieties of English and, conversely, how historical
change is reflected in present-day dialects. The fine-grained philological con-
cerns of Old and Middle English dialectology and the construction of corpora
suited for such research, as presented in the chapters by Richard Hogg, and Mar-
garet Laing and Roger Lass, are complemented by the detailed arguments emerg-
ing from recent exciting work on the British dialectal origins of African American
English in the chapter by Shana Poplack, the spin-offs of older regional dialects
in present-day language features in the chapter by Sali A. Tagliamonte, and
the development of Celtic Englishes in the chapter by Markku Filppula.
Finally, Part VI contains three chapters that have as their common denom-
inator various types of external influence on the language: a chapter on the
THOA01 03/02/2006 11:59 AM Page ix
Editors’ Introduction ix
impact of eighteenth-century prescriptivism by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van
Ostade, one on sociolinguistic influences as brought to light by careful corpus
work in the chapter by Terttu Nevalainen, and one on the development of English
as a world language, by Suzanne Romaine.
Although we have been much concerned with putting together a book with
work that attempts to give new and theoretically informed answers to old ques-
tions, we have been reluctant to make divisions in terms of theoretical issues.
The most important reason for this is that we were worried that any theoret-
ical division would construct as much as reflect theoretical ideologies. Not only
was this never our concern, we also feel that it would have been entirely
inappropriate as an approach toward a handbook on a field that is as empirical
as “the history of English.” This attitude is also reflected in the chapters by our
contributors, who on the whole seemed a good deal more concerned with pre-
senting theoretically informed work that resolves puzzles in their various
empirical domains than with engaging in polemics with each other. The divi-
sion of the book into parts has, in the end, been guided by the empirical domains
in which theoretical progress of various kinds has been made since the mid-
1990s, as reflected in detailed case studies. There is a good deal of emphasis
overall on language variation of various kinds, and this chimes well with the
recent general booming in the field of sociolinguistics and language variation.
The strength of the book lies, we hope, in applying recent insights to old
problems.
We wish to conclude with a work of thanks to most of our contributors for
their prompt delivery, and for their willingness to engage in a dialogue on their
chapters, and to exchange views with each other. Many thanks are also due to
Sarah Coleman at Blackwell for her cheerful and practical guidance of the whole
project.
Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los
May 2005
THOA01 03/02/2006 11:59 AM Page x
Notes on Contributors
Cynthia L. Allen
Cynthia L. Allen is a Reader in the School of Language Studies at the Austra-
lian National University and the Director of ANU’s Centre for Research on
Language Change. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Human-
ities. She specializes in history of English morphosyntax and her publications
include Case Marking and Reanalysis: Grammatical Relations from Old to Early Modern
English (1995).
[email protected]
Laurie Bauer
Laurie Bauer holds a personal chair in Linguistics at Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand. He is the author of a number of works on morphology
and English word-formation, including, most recently, in collaboration with
Rodney Huddleston, the chapter on English word-formation for the Cambridge
Grammar of the English Language (eds. R. Huddleston and G. Pullum, 2002). He
also writes on international varieties of English.
[email protected]
Laurel Brinton
Laurel Brinton is Professor of English at the University of British Columbia,
Canada, specializing in the history and structure of the English language. Her
research areas include verbal aspect, grammaticalization, lexicalization, and his-
torical pragmatics, with particular attention to the development of pragmatic
markers. Most recently, she has co-authored Lexicalization and Language Change
(with Elizabeth Closs Traugott, 2005) and The History of English: A Linguistic
Introduction (with Leslie Arnovick, 2005).
[email protected]
William Croft
William Croft is Professor of Linguistics at the University of New Mexico (USA).
His main areas of specialization are typology, including grammaticalization;