The Handbook of the History of English is a collection of articles written by leading specialists in the field that focus on the theoretical issues behind the facts of the changing English language. The innovative organization of this volume applies recent insights to old problems and surveys the history of English from the perspective of structural developments in areas such as phonology, prosody, morphology, syntax, semantics, language variation, and dialectology. This unique handbook offers readers a comprehensive overview of the various theoretical perspectives available to the study of the history of English and sets new objectives for further research. Organizes the theoretical issues behind the facts of the changing English language innovatively and applies recent insights to old problems Surveys the history of English from the perspective of structural developments in areas such as phonology, prosody, morphology, syntax, semantics, language variation, and dialectology Offers readers a comprehensive overview of the various theoretical perspectives available to the study of the history of English and sets new objectives for further research

Ans van Kemenade is Professor in the Department of English at the Radboud University Nijmegen, and is author of Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English (1987), and The Syntax of Early English (2000; with O. Fischer, W. Koopman, and W. van der Wurff).
Bettelou Los is a lecturer in the Department of English at the Radboud University Nijmegen. She is author of Infinitival Complementation in Old and Middle English (1999) and The Rise of the to-infinitive (2005).

Introduction.
Part I: Approaches and issues.
Part II: Words: derivation and prosody.
Part III: Inflectional morphology and syntax.
Part IV: Pragmatics.
Part V: Pre- and postcolonial varieties.
Part VI: Standardisation and globalization.
Appendix: Historical Corpora.
Index.