Full Description
This Language, A River is an introduction to the history of English that recognizes multiple varieties of the language in both current and historical contexts. Developed over years of undergraduate teaching, the book helps students to both grasp traditional histories of English, and also to extend and complicate those histories. Exercises throughout provide opportunities for puzzling out concepts, committing terms and data to memory, and applying ideas. A comprehensive glossary and up-to-date bibliographies help to guide further study.
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Grammar Fundamentals
Section 1: Parts of Speech
Section 2: Basic Syntactic Relations for Nouns
Section 3: Sentences
Chapter 3: Before English
Section 1: Before English
Section 2: The Genetic Model
Section 3: The Proto-IE Nominal Group
Section 4: The Proto-IE Verbal Group
Chapter 4: Introduction to Phonetics and the International Phonetics Alphabet
Section 1: Introduction to Phonetics and the International Phonetics Alphabet
Section 2: The International Phonetic Alphabet
Section 3: Describing the Sounds of English
Section 4: Practice with IPA
Chapter 5: Germanic
Section 1: Migration of the Indo-Europeans
Section 2: Development of Germanic
Section 3: Distinctive Features of Germanic
Chapter 6: A Review of Four Important Terms and Concepts
Chapter 7: Old English
Section 1: The Early External History
Section 2: OE Orthography and Phonology
Section 3: The OE Verbal Group
Section 4: The OE Nominal Group
Section 5: OE Syntax
Section 6: OE and Old Norse
Section 7: OE Literature
Chapter 8: Middle English
Section 1: The Norman Conquest
Section 2: The Reemergence of English
Section 3: Orthography and Phonology
Section 4: The ME Nominal Group
Section 5: The ME Verbal Group
Section 6: Literature in the ME Period
Chapter 9: Early Modern English
Section 1: The Early Modern Period and the Age of Print
Section 2: Phonology
Section 3: Morphology and Syntax
Section 4: The Early Modern English Verbal Group
Section 5: Standardization and Prescription
Chapter 10: The Modern Period and Global Englishes
Section 2: American English
Section 3: Global Englishes
Glossary of Terms
