28.3803, Review: English; History of Linguistics: Nevalainen, Traugott (2016)

Fri Sep 15 18:20:45 UTC 2017

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-3803. Fri Sep 15 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.3803, Review: English; History of Linguistics: Nevalainen, Traugott (2016)

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Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2017 14:20:40
From: Matteo Tarsi [matteo.tarsi88 at gmail.com]
Subject: The Oxford Handbook of the History of English

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-4504.html

EDITOR: Terttu  Nevalainen
EDITOR: Elizabeth Closs Traugott
TITLE: The Oxford Handbook of the History of English
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Handbooks
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Matteo Tarsi, University of Iceland

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“The Oxford Handbook of the History of English”, edited by Terttu Nevalainen
and Elizabeth Cross Traugott, was published in 2012 by the Oxford University
Press, and has come out as a paperback edition in 2016. The handbook consists
of an introduction and 69 chapters organized into four parts (I-IV), plus a
glossary and indices. The parts are as follows: “Rethinking the Evidence” (I);
“Issues in Culture and Society” (II); “Approaches from Contact and Typology”
(III); and “Rethinking Categories and Models” (IV). Moreover, each part is
subdivided into two subsections, which then contain the single chapters. Each
part is preceded by a one-page description titled “Guide to Part ...”, where
the single chapters are outlined. These “guides”, alongside the first chapter
of each part, serve as a key-note for the single parts.

Part I, “Rethinking the Evidence”, is subdivided into the following
subsections: “Evidence” and “Observing Recent Change through Electronic
Corpora”. The first subsection’s main objective is that of giving an overview
of the different typologies of evidence which may be found along the history
of the English language (manuscripts, personal names, coins, inscriptions,
written and printed texts, etc.). Already in this subsection one can see the
main trend of this part, and moreover of the entire handbook, namely the use
of corpora as data repositories for advances in research. In this subsection
in fact numerous case-studies are presented, whose methodology rests upon the
use of corpora (e.g. ch. 6 “Examples of Evidence from Phonology”). This trend
will be the main focus in the second subsection of Part I “Observing Recent
Change through Electronic Corpora”. In this subsection a methodology which
heavily rests upon the use of corpora is outlined, alongside a thorough
description of numerous corpora and their use in research.

Part II, “Issues in Culture and Society”, is subdivided into the following
subsections: “Mass Communication and Technology” and “Sociocultural
Processes”. In the first subsection, the issue of English as a language for
mass communication is addressed, both for what concerns older stages of the
language, as well as Present-Day English(es). This subsection is concerned
both with phonological as well as sociolinguistic issues, and serves well as
an introduction for the next subsection, “Sociocultural Processes”. Here, the
social factors involved in language change are addressed, namely culture,
ideology, and power. Moreover, the processes entailing the aforementioned
factors are outlined: stratification, standardization, colonialization,
globalization, industrialization and urbanization, democratization, and
cultural assimilation. A specific chapter (29) is dedicated to the issue of
democratization. The other chapters in this subsection are concerned with
pragmatic and sociolinguistic issues such as politeness, prescriptivism, and
standardization. A special case-study chapter (36) is dedicated to English in
Ireland.

Part III, “Approaches from Contact and Typology”, is concerned with advances
in research on the English language from contact linguistics and typology, and
it is thus divided into two subsections mirroring, and named after, these two
fields of linguistics: “Language Contact” and “Typology and Typological
Change”. In the former subsection, approaches from language contact studies
are applied to English in different times and places, notably Old, Middle, and
Modern English on one side, and North America, Asia, and Africa on the other.
The most important language contact processes during the history of English
are addressed, namely Celtic, and Scandinavian for what concerns British
English, and local contact varieties e.g. in Asia and Africa. Moreover, issues
related to code-switching, SL acquisition, and pidginization/creolization are
also addressed. In the following subsection, dedicated to typological
approaches to language change, a wealth of different areas in typological
linguistics are explored. Among these are: lexicon, syntax, morphosyntax, and
grammaticalization.

Part IV, “Rethinking Categories and Modules”, is dedicated to issues
concerning cycles and continua,  thence the title of the first subsection, and
information structure and its interrelations with syntax. In the first
subsection, a wide overview of cycles and continua is given, both from a
general point of view (e.g. ch. 57 “The Syntax-Lexicon Continuum”), as well as
from case studies (e.g. ch. 59 “(Non)-rhoticity: Lessons from New Zealand
English”). In the second subsection the main focus is on syntax and
Information Structure. Analyses are given of phenomena such as V2, word order
(OV/VO) in Old English, and local anchoring.

The four parts are followed by a short glossary, a list of corpora and
databases, and three indices (subject matter, corpora, and databases;
languages and varieties of English; and authors). The material printed in this
handbook may be further integrated with extras retrievable from the handbook’s
homepage (http://www.oup.com/us/ohhe).

EVALUATION

Overall, “The Oxford Handbook of the History of English” is a well-organized
reference book for advanced students and researchers who deal with a wide
variety of approaches to  the history of the English language. Far from being
conventional, this handbook is by no means a beginners’ book, for it lacks the
foundations of the linguistic-historical study of the English language, viz.
an overview e.g. on the sound changes from PIE to Old English via
Proto-Germanic. This is, however, not a weakness since the purposes of the
handbook are clearly stated by the editors in the introduction (p. 2 and
passim). 

The use of corpora for diachronic as well as synchronic linguistic research is
a main tenet of the book. As possibly the most extensively studied language in
the world, English is paradigmatically well fit to be further studied with the
aid of the most recent technologies and data repositories available. Moreover,
English as a world-wide language of communication offers an extensive variety
of phenomena as well as amount of data, thus constituting an extremely
stimulating laboratory also for further studies of other languages. In
relation to this, the scholarly community interested in recent linguistic
change will find Part I, 2 of special interest. Davies’ chapter (12) in  fact,
sets out the main methodological issues related to the use of big as well as
small corpora. Moreover, he comprises in his overview, corpora of contemporary
language such as Google, which undoubtedly constitutes a major linguistic
resource when used cum grano salis. 

The strength of Part II resides instead in its approach to (socio)linguistic
issues. Particular emphasis is put on recent history of English, thus leaving
stages of the language for which we have less well balanced and/or
quantitatively smaller data not equally well represented. This is of course
quite understandable given the overall approach of the book, the most recent
lines of research, and, last but not least, the nature of data for older
stages of English. 

Specifically devoted to language contact, Part III,1 also puts major stress on
more recent phenomena in the history of English. Given its major focus on
contact phenomena, this part is almost entirely devoted to pidgins and
creoles. At any rate, older stages of English are represented by Chapters 38
to 41. Hickey’s chapter (38) on the so-called Celtic hypothesis is
illuminating and well represents a general trend of this handbook, namely that
of revising old problems with new eyes. In his analysis, Hickey lists and
discusses different linguistic elements (e.g. internal possessor construction,
twofold paradigm of to be, the periphrastic do) which possibly point at Celtic
influence in English. Hickey’s analysis however, does not propose a solution
but rather hints at the fact that an interplay between internal and external
factors might have been at work in early English. Of peculiar interest is also
Pahta’s chapter (41) on code-switching in medieval English. Unfortunately, the
discussion offered by the author could have been more articulated, especially
for what concerns the relationship between code-switching and the introduction
of new elements in the lexicon (loanwords, lexical (semantically polarized)
doublets etc.). Part III, 2 is somewhat better balanced for it consistently
approaches the history of the English language from a diachronic typological
point of view, therefore comprising in its analysis both old and new(er)
stages of the English language. 

Part IV, 1 proposes an analysis of different cycles and continua in the
history of the English language. The part is well balanced in that it both
comprises contributions on older and newer stages of the English language.
Finally, in Part IV, 2 the interface with information structure is discussed.
Of particular interest is van Kemenade’s chapter (63) on the loss of V2. In
fact, this issue is still being discussed in the scholarly community and van
Kemenade proposes an explanation based on Information Stucture, thus
substantially contributing to the discussion on the matter.

My evaluation of the present book cannot be negative, for it undoubtedly
constitutes a milestone in recent scholarship on both the history of the
English language and corpus analysis. However, it should be noted that the
major weakness of the handbook is to my eyes its title. In fact, as the
editors explicitly state in the introduction (p. 2): “Our aim in the current
volume is to take stock of some of the recent advances in the work on the
history of English and varieties of English world-wide”. This objective is
thoroughly pursued in the handbook. However, such a general title, i.e.
“Handbook of the History of English”, surprises me, for it is a title that
would actually be more suitable for the kind of handbook the editors are
admittedly not aiming at. Since the objective of “The Oxford Handbook of the
History of English” is that of presenting the state-of-the-art and further
advances in the research on the history of the English language with special
focus on the use of corpora, a title which mirrored this more directly would
have been more suitable.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I am a Ph.D student in Icelandic Linguistics at the University of Iceland,
Reykjavík. My research focuses on the interplay between loanwords and native
words in Old and Middle Icelandic. Among my other research interests are:
history of linguistics (especially in the 18th century), etymology, loanword
studies, and language planning and policy studies).

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