The volume features a selection of new work presented at the 2004 meeting of the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL). Main conference themes reflected in this volume are: the maturation and broadening of historical corpus linguistics, a new interest in English for Specific Purposes as a diachronic phenomenon, and the role of grammar writing in the process of change. A further thematic strand of this book is the significance of functional aspects in the development of grammar and discourse, especially in domains beyond phonology and morphology. Several contributions focus on the operation of socio-pragmatic and functional factors in historically identifiable social networks, especially in the 18th century. Apart from that there is also a strong emphasis on developments in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Contents:

Minoji Akimoto: On the Decline of after and forth in Verb Phrases - Anita Auer: Precept and Practice: The Influence of Prescriptivism on the English Subjunctive - Joan C. Beal/Anthony P. Grant: "Make do and mend": An Online Investigation into Processes of Neologisation and the Dearth of Borrowing in Newer English Wartime Vocabulary - Claudia Claridge: 'With the most superlative felicitee': Functions of the Superlative in 19th-Century English - Thomas Egan: Pronominal and Full Nominal Subjects in Expanding Constructions - Larisa Oldireva Gustafsson: Irregular Verbs in 17th- and 18th-Century English Grammars: A Maze of Classifications - Minna Palander-Collin/Minna Nevala: Reporting in 18th-Century Letters of Hester Piozzi - Günter Rohdenburg: The Role of Functional Constraints in the Evolution of the English Complementation System - Anni Sairio: Progressives in the Letters of Elizabeth Montagu and her Circle in 1738-1778 - Elena Seoane: Changing Styles: On the Recent Evolution of Scientific British and American English - Stefan Thim: Phrasal Verbs in Late Middle and Early Modern English: Combinations with back, down, forth, out, and up - Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: "Disrespectful and too familiar?" Abbreviations as an Index of Politeness in 18th-Century Letters.