Thoroughly revised and updated with some 500 new entries-including the addition of pertinent Internet sites-this is the only bibliographic guide to information sources for linguistics. Coverage spans from 1957, the publication date of Chomsky's seminal work, to the present, with emphasis on English-language resources. DeMiller's detailed citations describe and evaluate each work, often offering comparisons to similar titles. Its broad coverage and in-depth reviews make this work essential to the research and study of general or theoretical linguistics. The book is also indispensable in the related areas of anthropological linguistics, applied linguistics, mathematical and computation linguistics, psycholinguistics, semiotics, and sociolinguistics, which are all treated in separate chapters, as well as the study of language and languages from a linguistic perspective. A must for any library supporting the study of linguistics or its related fields, this is a valuable reference and research tool. It i

The Handbook of Language Mapping aims to explore the core methodological and theoretical approaches of linguistic cartography. In both empirical and theoretical linguistics, the spatial variation of language is of increasing interest and the visualization of language in space is therefore also of growing significance. It is the precondition for correct data interpretation. But how does it work? What has to be considered when drawing a map? And how has the problem been tackled so far? This book provides answers to such questions by taking a closer look at the theoretical issues surrounding cartography and at the concrete practice of mapping. The fundamental issues raised are addressed particularly well, since linguistic geography is not only one of the domains with a lengthy tradition, it is also one of the most progressive fields in linguistics. At the same time, because of their visual primacy, linguistic maps directly confront the challenges of human perception and aesthetics. In this context, envisioning the fruits of language mapping is a fascinating and inspiring endeavor, not just for experts. With its accessible texts and wealth of full-color images, the handbook not only represents a comprehensive manual serving the interests of a variety of readers, it also fills a gap in the ongoing linguistic discourse.

Since the publication of Kennedy's monumental Bibliography of Writings on the English Language, no bibliography has systematically surveyed the Old and Middle English scholarship accumulated over the past 60 years. Tajima's work aims to meet the need for an updated bibliography of Old and Middle English language studies; it lists books, monographs, dissertations, articles, notes, and reviews on Old and Middle English language. The items have been listed into fourteen fairly broad categories: (1) Bibliographies, (2) Dictionaries, glossaries and concordances, (3) Histories of the English language, (4) Grammars (historical, Old English and Middle English), (5) General and miscellaneous studies, (6) Language of individual authors or works, (7) Orthography and punctuation, (8) Phonology and phonetics, (9) Morphology, (10) Syntax, (11) Lexicology, lexicography and word-formation, (12) Onomastics, (13) Dialectology, (14) Stylistics.

The purpose of this volume is to offer a number of scholarly papers dealing with various aspects of medieval English language and literature. Voices on Medieval is organised in three main sections, according to contents: (1) medical and scientific texts and manuscripts, (2) language and linguistics, and (3) literature and culture. Bibliographic references and primary sources are given after each article, preceding the notes. We have devoted a special section to studies which portray ongoing research in the field of scientific and medical manuscripts. These essays correspond to a reflection of projects and individual work currently carried out in different European research centres and universities, such as in the Department of English of the University of Helsinki, in the Department of Modern Philology of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and in the Department of English of the University of Málaga. This special section will represent, we hope, a further contribution to the field and, also, to the forthcoming titles by Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English (OUP) and Corpus of Middle English Medical Texts (John Benjamins).

Textbooks inform readers that the precursor of Standard English was supposedly an East or Central Midlands variety which became adopted in London; that monolingual fifteenth century English manuscripts fall into internally-cohesive Types; and that the fourth Type, dating after 1435 and labelled ‘Chancery Standard’, provided the mechanism by which this supposedly Midlands variety spread out from London. This set of explanations is challenged by taking a multilingual perspective, examining Anglo-Norman French, Medieval Latin and mixed-language contexts as well as monolingual English ones. By analysing local and legal documents, mercantile accounts, personal letters and journals, medical and religious prose, multiply-copied works, and the output of individual scribes, standardisation is shown to have been preceded by supralocalisation rather than imposed top-down as a single entity by governmental authority. Linguistic features examined include syntax, morphology, vocabulary, spelling, letter-graphs, abbreviations and suspensions, social context and discourse norms, pragmatics, registers, text-types, communities of practice social networks, and the multilingual backdrop, which was influenced by shifting socioeconomic trends.

What Kind of a Thing Is a Middle English Lyric? considers issues pertaining to a corpus of several hundred short poems written in Middle English between the twelfth and early fifteenth centuries. The chapters draw on perspectives from varied disciplines, including literary criticism, musicology, art history, and cognitive science. Since the early 1900s, the poems have been categorized as “lyrics,” the term now used for most kinds of short poetry, yet neither the difficulties nor the promise of this treatment have received enough attention. In one way, the book argues, considering these poems to be lyrics obscures much of what is interesting about them. Since the nineteenth century, lyrics have been thought of as subjective and best read without reference to cultural context, yet nonetheless they are taken to form a distinct literary tradition. Since Middle English short poems are often communal and usually spoken, sung, and/or danced, this lyric template is not a good fit. In another way, however, the very differences between these poems and the later ones on which current debates about the lyric still focus suggest they have much to offer those debates, and vice versa. As its title suggests, this book thus goes back to the basics, asking fundamental questions about what these poems are, how they function formally and culturally, how they are (and are not) related to other bodies of short poetry, and how they might illuminate and be illuminated by contemporary lyric scholarship. Eleven chapters by medievalists and two responses by modernists, all in careful conversation with one another, reflect on these questions and suggest very different answers. The editors’ introduction synthesizes these answers by suggesting that these poems can most usefully be read as a kind of “play,” in several senses of that word. The book ends with eight “new Middle English lyrics” by seven contemporary poets.