Preface
Preliminaries. The basics of linguistic
description
1. The origins of English and the meaning of "English". Periodisation. The external history of English
2. Old English
3. Middle English
4. Transition to Modern English
5. English in the age of Shakespeare
6. English after Shakespeare until 1800
7. English in 1800 and after
8. A short overview of English world varieties. English as a second language. The concept of nativeness
9. Managing textual evidence for empirical research in English historical linguistics. Transcriptions and editions. Corpus linguistics methods and tools
Reading passages
Key to exercises
References cited

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