![]() ![]() The most radical changes to English grammar had already taken place over the roughly one thousand years preceding the starting year of this volume. As the demographic shift in the English-speaking population moved away from Britain, the twentieth would be declared the American century, and the Empire would strike back. The language was now not so much to be improved but preserved as a great national monument and defended from threat in a battle over whose norms would prevail. ![]() In the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth the success of England as an imperial nation combined with romantic ideas about language being the expression of a people's genius would engender a triumphalist and patriotic attitude to English. After two centuries of effort to remedy the perceived inadequacies of English to enable it to meet a continually expanding range of functions, the eighteenth century was a time for putting the final touches on it, to fix things once and for all. This so-called Augustan Age was one of refinement. Baugh and Cable (1993) appropriately entitle their chapter on the period from 1650 to 1800 ‘The Appeal to Authority’, characterising the intellectual spirit of the age as one seeking order and stability, both political and linguistic. The final decades of the eighteenth century provide the starting point for this volume – a time when arguably less was happening to shape the structure of the English language than to shape attitudes towards it in a social climate that became increasingly prescriptive. Thomas Cable is Jane and Roland Blumberg Centennial Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. Albert C.Baugh was Schelling Memorial Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Revisions include: a revised first chapter, ‘English present and future’ a new section on gender issues and linguistic change updated material on African-American Vernacular English A student supplement for this book is available, entitled Companion to A History of the English Language. The fifth edition has been revised and updated to keep students up to date with recent developments in the field. The book provides students with a balanced and up-to-date overview of the history of the language. ![]() A History of the English Language is a comprehensive exploration of the linguistic and cultural development of English, from the Middle Ages to the present day. Baugh and Cable’s A History of the English Language has long been considered the standard work in the field. ![]()
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