Edited by Christian Kay, Simon Horobin and Jeremy J. Smith
This is the first of two volumes of papers selected from those given at the 12th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. The second is New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics (2): Lexis and Transmission. Together the volumes provide an overview of many of the issues… read more
The papers in this volume are linked by a common concern, which is at the centre of current linguistic enquiry: how do we classify and categorize linguistic data, and how does this process add to our understanding of linguistic change? The scene is set by Aitchison’s paper on the development of… read more
Religious controversy in English has always been marked by ideologically charged lexicons. Developments in the analysis of machine-readable corpora have enabled more robust conclusions to be drawn about the nature of these vocabularies, relating particular usages to particular confessional… read more
In early 18th-century Scotland, a group of writers and printers appeared who were engaged, as a community of practice, on the recuperation of Scots verse composed some two hundred years earlier. In doing so they have a claim to be the ‘inventors’ of Scots, bringing about what literary critics… read more
The English Reformation of the mid-sixteenth century was characterised by a vigorous public discourse of controversy, mediated by the still-novel printing press. On the one side were those – the godly – who favoured reformed religion; on the other were those – generally exiles – who held to… read more