Last Update: February 7, 2005
ENG 590: HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Linguistics Section, Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus
http://www.punksinscience.org/kleanthes/courses/UCY05S/HOTEL
This is a random list of webpages dealing with the History of the English Language (HOTEL) found on the internet. For more links, see also various class handouts as well as the READINGS-PAGE.
A (VERY) BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
http://www.wordorigins.org/histeng.htm
WELCOME TO HELL
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/helhome.htm
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/hel/hel.html
EDWIN DUNCAN'S ENGLISH LANGUAGE HISTORY ONLINE RESOURCES
http://www.towson.edu/%7Eduncan/hellinks.html
DERRICK PITARD'S HELPFUL HEL-LINKS
http://srufaculty.sru.edu/derrick.pitard/helsites.htm
OLD ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/index.html
OLD ENGLISH PHONOLOGY
http://www.yorksj.ac.uk/dialect/OEphon.htm
THE PENN-HELSINKI PARSED CORPUS OF MIDDLE ENGLISH
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/mideng
THE EVOLUTION OF PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/hel/helmod
HOTEL-BIBLIOGRAPHY (FROM DERRICK PRITARD'S COURSE )
http://www.sru.edu/depts/artsci/engl/dpitard/helbibliography.htm
HOTEL-BIBLIOGRAPHY II (FROM PETER GREENBERG'S COURSE )
The Cambridge History of the English Language. Ed. Richard M. Hogg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992-. Six volumes. A reference work with essays on different aspects of language, with each volume covering a particular period (Vol. 1, Old English; Vol. 2, Middle English; etc.).
Cameron, Deborah. The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader. 2nd ed., Routledge, 1998.
Burke, Crowley and Girvin, eds. The Routledge Language and Cultural Theory Reader. Routledge, 2000. An excellent collection of essays by most of the major authorities on language and theory. Also has excellent bibliographies at the beginning of each section.
Crowley, Tony. Language in History: Theories and Texts. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Knowles, Gerry. A Cultural History of the English Language. London: Arnold, 1997.
Leith, Dick. A Social History of the English, 2nd. ed. London: Routledge, 1997. Like Knowles (above), this is a brief overview from a British perspective, with a greater emphasis on class, race, economics and other social concerns than is found in traditional histories.
The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Ed. Tom McArthur. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Pinker, Stephen. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. Harper Collins, 1994. Pinker's thesis is controversial, but he covers a wide range of fascinating topics concerning language, in a very readable style.
_____. Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. Harper Collins, 2000. In a very readable book, Pinker uses the basic distinction between regular and irregular verbs to explore matters ranging from how the mind works to the way languages change.
Ricks, Christopher and Leonard Michaels, eds. The State of the Language. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
Bragg, Melvyn. The Adventure of English.
Bryden, Bill. Mother Tongue.
Burgess, Anthony. A Mouthful of Air: Language, Languages...Especially English. New York: William Morrow, 1992. Fascinating group of essays on language, historical and contemporary, by the well-known novelist and teacher.
Claiborne, Robert. Our Marvelous Native Tongue: The Life and Times of the English Language. New York: Times Books, 1983. Covers same ground as Millward, in a popular and entertaining style, while retaining some of the technical knowledge. Index of words mentioned.
McCrum, Robert, William Cran and Robert MacNeil. The Story of English. New York: Viking, 1986. Companion to the PBS [in the UK: BBC] television series. Interesting illustrations, entertaining tidbits with non-technical approach.
Greenberg, Joseph Harold, ed. Universals of Human Language. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1978.
Mallory, J. P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1989.
Renfrew, Colin. Archaeology and Language: the Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988, c1987.
Ruhlen, Merritt. The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue. New York: John Wiley, 1994. Ruhlen attempts to prove that all world languages descend from a common ancestor, in the process demonstrating how language relationships are examined, and giving much more space to African, Asian and Native American languages than any of the other books listed here.
Also see Scientific American articles by Bellwood (July 91), Cavalli-Sforza (Nov 91), Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (March 90), Greenberg and Ruhlen (Nov 92), Phillpson (April 77), Renfrew (Oct 89 and January 94), Turner (Feb 89).
The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Our Bible. This new edition of the OED provides us with a full history of a word and all its uses, brought up to the present. The first edition, published around the turn of the century, is still very valuable and can be found in the main stacks. (The most recent version of all can be found online at the UPS library.
Sledd, James and Wilma R. Ebbitt. Dictionaries and That Dictionary. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1962. A casebook on the purposes of dictionaries and the uproar over Webster's Third International.
Winchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything and The Professor and the Madman. Two popular books about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, focusing as much on the people involved as on the details of putting the OED together.
Crystal, David. Stories of English. Overlook, 2004. A history of English that emphasizes the regional and non-standard varieties of the language that have always existed alongside the standard.
Melchers, Gunnel and Philip Shaw. World Englishes. Arnold, 2003. Study of the many varieties of English spoken around the globe.
Mufwene, Salikoko S., John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey, and John Baugh. African-American English: Structure, History and Use. Routledge, 1998. A collection of readings representing the history and most recent understanding of African-American English.
Crowley, Tony. Proper English? New York: Routledge, 1991. A selection of readings on correctness and "properness" from the eighteenth century to the present, introduced and critiqued from Crowley's radical perspective.
Leonard, Sterling Andrus. The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700-1800. Univ of Wisconsin, 1929. A study of the eighteenth century attempts to regularize the language.
Newman, Edwin. Strictly Speaking: Will America Be the Death of English? Bobbs-Merrill, 1974. An entertaining attack on the popular use of English by Americans, especially politicians, drawn from Newmanfs experience as a journalist.
Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Gotham Books, 2003. The surprise best-seller about punctuation. Entertaining and informative, but beware: Truss is a Brit, and many of the specifics here would be different in the U.S.