{"id":2432,"date":"2013-01-19T10:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-01-19T08:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=2432"},"modified":"2013-01-17T12:32:03","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T10:32:03","slug":"analysing-older-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=2432","title":{"rendered":"Analysing older English"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;\"><strong>Analysing older English<\/strong>. Ed by <strong>David Denison<\/strong>,<strong> Ricardo Berm\u00fadez-Otero<\/strong>,<strong> Chris McCully<\/strong>, and <strong>Emma Moore<\/strong>. (Studies in English language.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. 335. ISBN <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcat.org\/title\/analysing-older-english\/oclc\/800910156&amp;referer=brief_results\">9780521112468<\/a>. $99 (Hb).<\/div>\n<p align=\"right\">Reviewed by <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/linguistlist.org\/people\/personal\/get-personal-page2.cfm?PersonID=164800\">Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Mondon<\/a><\/strong>, <em>Minot State University<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This book contains thirteen articles organized into five sections: metrics\/onomastics, writing practices, dialects, phonology, and syntax. No stage of English is left untouched. Each of the five sections is introduced by one of the editors, and each introduction effectively serves as a detailed abstract for the following articles, some taking the tone of critical reviews.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Geoffrey Russom<\/strong>, in \u2018What explanatory metrics has to say about the history of English function words\u2019, argues that Old English metrical principles evolved into Middle English, arguing that the need for function words was curtailed by strict restrictions on placement in a line. <strong>Richard Coates<\/strong> studies in detail the process of onymization in his contribution, \u2018<em>To \u00fe\u00e6re fulan fl\u00f3de \u00f3f \u00fe\u00e6re fulan fl\u00f3de<\/em>: On becoming a name in Easton and Winchester, Hampshire\u2019. He concludes that it is more cost-effective for a name to be void of semantic content. <strong>Peter Kitson<\/strong>\u2019s \u2018Notes on some interfaces between place-name material and linguistic theory\u2019 samples a variety of topics, ranging from the debate over the Celtic element in English place- and river-names to alleged syncope in <em>herepa\u00fe<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>R. D. Fulk<\/strong>\u2019s interesting article, \u2018Anglian features in late West Saxon prose\u2019, thoroughly reviews the different accounts for Anglian features in certain unplaced West Saxon texts, concluding that there was a one-way street, with original Anglian features being expunged. <strong>Roger Lass <\/strong>and<strong> Margaret Laing<\/strong>\u2019s \u2018<em>ea<\/em> in early Middle English: From diphthong to digraph\u2019 provides a textually rich study of the fate of <em>ea<\/em>. Due to different phonological developments between its original long and short counterparts, <em>ea<\/em> came to be reinterpreted as a digraph capable of representing any front non-high vowel.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Joan Beal<\/strong>, in \u2018Levelling and enregisterment in northern dialects of late Modern English\u2019, studies dialect contact and formation in late\u2013nineteenth-century Britain. <strong>April McMahon <\/strong>and<strong> Warren Maguire<\/strong> discuss the development of analytic methods for comparing languages and dialects as holistic entities in \u2018Quantitative historical dialectology\u2019. <strong>Terrtu Nevalainen<\/strong>, in \u2018Reconstructing syntactic continuity and change in early modern English regional dialects: The case of <em>who<\/em>\u2019, uncovers distinct systems of relativization between East Anglia and London, contradicting change from above.<\/p>\n<p>Three articles deal specifically with phonological developments. <strong>Donka Minkova<\/strong>\u2019s \u2018Syllable weight and the weak-verb paradigms in Old English\u2019 proposes that syncope was too opaque synchronically to serve as a determiner for the behavior of class 1 weak verbs. <strong>Nikolaus Ritt<\/strong>, in \u2018How to weaken one\u2019s consonants, strengthen one\u2019s vowels, and remain English at the same time\u2019, discusses the consistent yet distinct tendencies of consonant weakening and vocalic strengthening in English, which he colors with a discussion of how such tendencies are non-teleological. <strong>Derek Britton<\/strong>\u2019s \u2018Degemination in English, with special reference to the Middle English period\u2019 deals with consonantal length becoming non-contrastive.<\/p>\n<p>With respect to syntax, <strong>Olga Fischer<\/strong>, in \u2018The status of the postposed \u201c<em>and<\/em>-adjective\u201d construction in Old English: Attributive or predicative?\u2019, discusses the interpretation of postnominal adjectives, differentiating between those accompanied by a determiner and those without. Finally, <strong>Anthony Warner<\/strong>\u2019s article, \u2018<em>DO<\/em> with weak verbs in early modern English\u2019, uses William Labov\u2019s work on misperception to account for the rise of <em>do<\/em> in third-person singular negative declaratives of regular verbs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Analysing older English. Ed by David Denison, Ricardo Berm\u00fadez-Otero, Chris McCully, and Emma Moore. (Studies in English language.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. 335. ISBN 9780521112468. $99 (Hb). Reviewed by Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Mondon, Minot State University This book contains thirteen articles organized into five sections: metrics\/onomastics, writing practices, dialects, phonology, and syntax. No stage of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2433,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432\/revisions\/2433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}