Studies in the History of the English Language 4

The fourth in a series of collections arising out of conferences at the University of California at Los Angeles on studying the history of the English language, this volume contains 19 contributions in which authors were asked to reflect upon their approaches and practices in their work, focusing particularly on the methods deployed in selecting and analyzing data. The contributions, which frequently comment on each other, discuss such topics as the "triggers" of changes in vowel systems that tend to be represented as chain shifts, methods of coding for information-structure of Old English syntax, the use of older verse in determining authorship and reconstructing language change, analysis of the fidelity of scansion in modern English translations of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the exploitation of independent metrical evidence to assess the (possibly Chaucerian) authorship of The Romaunt of the Rose, and current approaches to morphosyntactic change in English. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Susan M. Fitzmaurice, University of Sheffield, UK; Donka Minkova, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.