This is the first of two volumes of papers selected from those given at the 12th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. The second is New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics (2): Lexis and Transmission. Together the volumes provide an overview of many of the issues that are currently engaging practitioners in the field. In this volume, the primary concern is with the historical grammar of English. Some papers take a broad overview of the subject, positioning it within current advances in linguistic theory, while others deal with specific points of syntax and morphology in a historical context. There is a recurrent emphasis on data collection and analysis, with a chronological range from Old to Present Day English, and a geographical spread from Scotland to Newfoundland. Contributions from scholars around the world remind us that not only English itself but the history of English is now an international possession.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements vii Introduction ix–x Verbal -s reconsidered: The Subject Type Constraint as a diagnostic of historical transatlantic relationship Sandra Clarke 1–13 Do grammars change when they leak? David Denison 15–29 Grammar change versus language change: Is there a difference? Olga Fischer 31–63 Indefinite Pronominal Anaphora in English correspondence between 1500 and 1800 Mikko Laitinen 65–81 From resultative predicate to event-modifier: The case of forth and on Bettelou Los 83–102 Family values April McMahon and Robert McMahon 103–123 From inventory to typology in English historical dialectology Anneli Meurman-Solin 125–151 Consumers of correctness: Men, women, and language in eighteenth-century classified advertisements Carol Percy 153–176 Accounting for vernacular features in a Scottish dialect: Relic, innovation, analogy and drift Jennifer Smith 177–193 On MV/VM order in Beowulf Hironori Suzuki 195–213 DARE and NEED in British and American present-day English: 1960s–1990s Martine Taeymans 215–227 What drove do? Anthony Warner 229–242 The HAVE -‘perfect’ in Old English Ilse Wischer 243–255 Name index 257 Subject index 259