List of Maps and Figures
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
1.1 The Time Periods of English
1.2 Language Change
1.3 Sources of Information on Language Change
1.4 Linguistic Preliminaries
1.5 The Sounds of English,and Symbols Used to Describe Them
1.6 Structure of the Book
2 The Pre-history of English
2.1 The Indo-European Langages and Linguistic Relatedness
2.2 Linguistic Developments:The Indo-European Language Family
2.3 From Indo-European to Germanic
2.4 Typological Classification
2.5 Sociolinguistic Focus,The Indo-European Tribes and the Spread of
Language,Languag Contact and Language Change.
2.6 Conclusion
3 Old English
3.1 Social and Political History
3.2 Linguistic Deveopments:The Sounds,Structure and Typology of Old English
3.3 Linguistic and Literary Achievements
3.4 The Dialects of Old English
3.5 Sociolinguistic Focus
4 Middle English
4.1 Social and Political History
4.2 Linguistic Developments:Middle English Sounds and Structure,with Particular
Emphasis on the Breakdown of the Inflectional System and its Linguistic
Typological Implication
4.3 Middle English Dialects
4.4 Sociolinguistic Focus:Social Stratification,Multilingualism and Dialect
Variation,Language Contact:The Myth of Middle English Creolization
4.5 Conclusion
5 Early Modern English
6 Present-Day English
7 English in the United States
8 World-Wide English
Bibliograpby
Index