1 INTRODUCTION&Suzanne Romaine 1
1.1 From Old English to New Englishes：unity in diversity? 1
1.2 1776 and after：an age of revolutions and empires 6
1.3 Shifting centres of gravity and the notion of a common core 22
1.4 Language,nation,and identity：staking a claim on the past and future 48
1.5 Conclusion：a remarkable success story? 54
Further reading 56
2 VOCABULARY&John Algeo 57
2.1 The study of the English vocabulary 57
2.2 The growth of the vocabulary 61
2.3 Creating as a source of new words 66
2.4 Shifting as a source of new words 66
2.5 Shortening as a source of new words 71
2.6 Composing as a source of new words 74
2.7 Blending as a source of new words 76
2.8 Borrowing as a source of new words 76
2.9 Recent neologisms 82
2.10 Vocabulary change as a mirror of cultural change 88
Further reading 91
3 SYNTAX&David Denison 92
3.1 Introduction 92
3.2 The noun phrase 96
3.3 The verbal group 130
3.4 Elements of the clause 212
3.5 Structure of the clause 235
3.6 Composite sentences 255
Notes 312
Textual sources 323
Further reading 326
4 ONOMASTICS Richard Coates 330
Preamble 330
4.1 Sources for British names 332
4.2 Scholarship 336
4.3 Personal names 339
4.4 Surnames 348
4.5 Place-names 350
4.6 Street-names 365
4.7 Other categories of nameables 370
4.8 Academic writings on names 371
Further Reading 371
5 PHONOLOGY&Michael K.C.MacMahon 373
5.1 The soundscapes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 373
5.2 The historical sources and their interpretation 375
5.3 Methods of phonetic/phonological analysis 381
5.4 Standards and styles of pronunciation 382
5.5 Vowel systems 403
5.6 Vowel phonotactics(structural) 418
5.7 Vowel phonotactics(lexical-incidental) 438
5.8 Vowel realisations 448
5.9 Consonant systems 467
5.10 Consonant phonotactics(structural) 469
5.11 Consonant phonotactics(lexical-incidental) 483
5.12 Consonant realisations 486
5.13 Lexical stress 492
5.14 Intonation and rhythm 517
5.15 Voice qualities 519
5.16 Conclusions 520
Notes 522
Further reading 535
6 ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND USAGE&Edward Finegan 536
6.1 Introduction 536
6.2 First period：mid-eighteenth century-1830 540
6.3 Second period：1830-1930 557
6.4 Third period：1930-present 579
6.5 Conclusions and prospects 585
Further reading 587
7 LITERARY LANGUAGE&Sylvia Adamson 589
7.1 Introduction 589
7.2 Breaking the standard 598
7.3 Breaking the pentameter 614
7.4 The breaking of hypotaxis 630
7.5 The problem of metaphor 646
7.6 Self-expression and self-representation 661
7.7 CODA：the two revolutions and the literary common core 679
Further reading 681
Key to the numbered examples 684
Key to the cited authors 689
Glossary of linguisticterms 693
Bibliography 708
Index 762