Routledge Library Editions The English Language

This set reissues 29 books on the English language, originally published between 1932 and 2003. Together, the volumes cover key topics within the larger subject of the English Language, including grammar, dialect and the history of English. Written and edited by an international set of scholars, particular volumes employ comparisons with other languages such as French and German, whilst other volumes are devoted to specific English dialects such as Cockney and Canadian English, or English in general. This collection provides insight and perspective on various elements of the English language over a period of 70 years and demonstrates its enduring importance as a field of research.

What do English-speaking Canadians sound like and why? Can you tell the difference between a Canadian and an American? A Canadian and an Englishman? If so, how? Linguistically speaking is Canada a colony of Britain or a satellite of the United States? Is there a Canadian language? Speaking Canadian English, first published in 1971, in a non-technical way, describes English as it is spoken in Canada – its vocabulary, pronunciation, syntax, grammar, spelling, slang. This title comments on the history of Canadian English – how it came to sound the way it does – and attempts to predict what will happen to it in the future. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics.

RLE: Linguistics Mini-set A focuses on the field of General Linguistics, and collects classic titles from imprints such as Garland, Allen & Unwin, and Croom Helm. A variety of important international linguists are featured. The titles are: The Chomsky Update. The Conceptual Basis of Language. Foundations of General Linguistics. Ideologies of Language. Learning about Linguisics. Lexical Phonology and Morphology. The Linguistic Description of Opaque Contexts. Linguistic Meaning. Redefining Linguistics. A Theory of Stylistic Rules in English. Universal Grammar

First published in 1991, this book looks at tense in English, one of the most controversial areas of grammar. Prior to the book’s original publication, the problems and interest in the subject had led to an impressive number of books and articles. Yet, despite the amount of work produced, nothing approaching a consensus had emerged, merely a series of conflicting theories and analyses. Here, Renaat Declerck provides a framework for a theoretical instrument which will enable the linguist to interpret the data correctly. The book is primarily theoretical in nature, but offers descriptive theory and a discussion of the various tenses which will make it a valuable tool for those teaching English. Theoretical and applied linguists will find this an important contribution to the debate on tense and a worthy starting point for future research. The book is not written from the viewpoint of any particular linguistic theory and does not presuppose any knowledge of tense theory, it is a readable and reliable guide to the area.

Reissuing works originally published between 1978 and 1992, this collection includes books across the span of sociolinguistics, from its theory and philosophy to specific language change study. This small set will be of benefit to sociology and linguistics but also to psychology, media and communication, education and development studies.

Subject and Object in Modern English, first published in 1979, deals with subjects in the English language (one of the two main constituents of a clause), first comparing two possible notions of derived subject and then re-examining some derived subjects which had been assumed to be underlying subjects as well. This title also concerns itself with the basic verb phrase relations; not only with direct and indirect objects, but locative and directional phrases, with-phrases, and of-phrases considered. This book will be of interest to students of English language and linguistics.

A History of English, first published in 1970, is a book for beginners in linguistic history. This title examines the changes in English language speech and writing over a period of almost 2000 years, whilst also exploring more recent changes within the author’s living memory. This title aims to raise countless issues for enquiry and discussion, and its purpose is to serve as a springboard for language history learning rather than a textbook.

First published in 1988, this book explores the grammatical loss of gender in English. It demonstrates that from the end of the Old English period, there was a considerable time period, of about three hundred years, during which there existed "echoes" of the gender classification of nouns. The study records the best known conclusions concerning the behaviour of anaphoric pronouns under grammatical gender "stress" in the late Old English and Middle English periods. It focuses on a discussion of attributive word morphology in the noun phrase.