This guide gives students a solid grounding in the basic methodology of how to analyse corpus data to study new words entering the language or language change. .

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

Innovative, data-driven methods provide more rigorous and systematic evidence for the description and explanation of diachronic semantic processes. The volume systematises, reviews, and promotes a range of empirical research techniques and theoretical perspectives that currently inform work across the discipline of historical semantics. In addition to emphasising the use of new technology, the potential of current theoretical models (e.g. within variationist, sociolinguistic or cognitive frameworks) is explored along the way.

The papers in this volume show the range and direction of current work in historical semantics and word-studies. There is a strong focus throughout on semantic change and lexical innovation, interpreted within a sociolinguistic, cultural or textual context. Many of the papers draw on the remarkable range of electronic resources now available to historical linguists, notably corpora, dictionaries, bibliographies and thesauruses, and show the effects that these have had in stimulating new lines of research or the re-interpretation of previous conclusions. Cognitive semantics, and especially prototype theory, emerges as a challenging theoretical framework for much current research. The volume contains a selection from papers presented at the 10th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (10ICEHL). They include work on historical lexicography and an account of the workshop on electronic dictionary resources, such as the Revised Oxford English Dictionary, which formed the centrepiece of the Fourth G. L. Brook Symposium.

Uniquely organized in terms of theoretical approaches, this is an advanced textbook on the study of English historical linguistics.

Contains revised papers from a September 1996 symposium which provided a forum for synchronically and diachronically oriented scholars to exchange ideas and for American and European cognitive linguists to confront representatives of different directions in European structural semantics. Papers are in sections on theories and models, descriptive categories, and case studies, and examine areas such as cognitive and structural semantics, diachronic prototype semantics, synecdoche as a cognitive and communicative strategy, and intensifiers as targets and sources of semantic change.

This volume focuses on cutting-edge research in the history of the English language, while reflecting the diversity that exists in the current landscape of English historical linguistics. Chapters showcase traditional as well as novel methodologies in historical linguistics, work on linguistic interfaces, and on mechanisms of language change.

English historical linguistics is a subfield of linguistics which has developed theories and methods for exploring the history of the English language. This Handbook provides an account of state-of-the-art research on this history. It offers an in-depth survey of materials, methods, and language-theoretical models used to study the long diachrony of English. The frameworks covered include corpus linguistics, historical sociolinguistics, historical pragmatics and manuscript studies, among others. The chapters, by leading experts, examine the interplay of language theory and empirical data throughout, critically assessing the work in the field. Of particular importance are the diverse data sources which have become increasingly available in electronic form, allowing the discipline to develop in new directions. The Handbook offers access to the rich and many-faceted spectrum of work in English historical linguistics, past and present, and will be useful for researchers and students interested in hands-on research on the history of English.

The 19 papers in this volume are a selection from a UCLA conference intended to take stock of the state of the field at the beginning of the new millenium and to stimulate research in English Historical Linguistics. The authors are predominantly U.S. scholars. The fields represented include morphosyntax and semantics, grammaticalization, discourse analysis, dialectology, lexicography, the diachronic study of code-switching, phonology and metrics.

From the contents: Maurizio GOTTI: The origin of 17th century canting terms. - Anne MCDERMOTT: Early dictionaries of English and historical corpora: in search of hard words. - Paivi KOIVISTO-ALANKO: Prototypes in semantic change: a diachronic perspective on abstract nouns. - Manuela ROMANO POZO: A morphodynamic interpretation of synonymy and polysemy in Old English."