Showing papers in "English Language and Linguistics in 2009"
TL;DR: The authors argued that the verb-second rule was lost in Middle English, and this loss had serious consequences for the information structure of the clause, leading to the rise of new passive constructions in order to satisfy the need for more subjects.
Abstract: English syntax used to have a version of the verb-second rule, by which the finite verb moves to second position in main clauses. This rule was lost in Middle English, and this article argues that its loss had serious consequences for the information structure of the clause. In the new, rigid subject-verb-object syntax, the function of preposed constituents changed, and the function of encoding ‘old’ or ‘given’ information in a pragmatically neutral way was increasingly reserved for subjects. Pressure from information structure to repair this situation subsequently led to the rise of new passive constructions in order to satisfy the need for more subjects; the change in the informational status of preposed constituents triggered the rise of clefts. If information structure can be compromised by syntactic change in this way, this suggests that it represents a separate linguistic level outside the syntax.
61 citations
TL;DR: This paper investigated the role of lexical frequency in the spread of the well-known sound change TH-Fronting in an under-researched dialect area in east-central Scotland.
Abstract: Recent research on frequency effects in phonology suggests that word frequency is often a significant motivating factor in the spread of sound change through the lexicon. However, there is conflicting evidence regarding the exact nature of the relationship between phonological change and word frequency. This article investigates the role of lexical frequency in the spread of the well-known sound change TH-Fronting in an under-researched dialect area in east-central Scotland. Using data from a corpus of conversations compiled over a two-year period by the first author, we explore how the process of TH-Fronting is complicated in this community by the existence of certain local variants which are lexically restricted, and we question to what extent the frequency patterns that are apparent in these data are consistent with generalisations made in the wider literature on the relationship between lexical frequency and phonological change.
46 citations
TL;DR: The article provides additional empirical evidence in support of the analysis of so-called Main Clause Phenomena (MCP) or Root phenomena, that is, syntactic phenomena such as argument fronting, Locative Inversion, preposing around be, VP preposing and Negative Inversion which in English are by and large restricted to main clauses.
Abstract: In the literature it has been proposed that temporal adverbial clauses can be derived by wh-movement of an operator (e.g. when) to the left periphery (Geis 1970, 1975; Enc 1987: 655; Larson 1987, 1990; Dubinsky & Williams 1995; Declerck 1997; Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria 2004: 165–70). After reviewing the arguments that have been proposed in favour of such a movement analysis, the article provides additional empirical evidence in support of the analysis. The data concern so-called Main Clause Phenomena (MCP) or Root phenomena, that is, syntactic phenomena such as argument fronting, Locative Inversion, preposing around be, VP preposing and Negative Inversion, which in English are by and large restricted to main clauses. The unavailability of these MCP in temporal adverbial clauses follows directly from the movement account. The movement analysis will be extended to conditional clauses and factive clauses.
36 citations
TL;DR: This article focused on the question of language contact between English and Celtic in the period between the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britannia (?AD 449) and the Norman conquest of England (AD 1066).
Abstract: This article concentrates on the question of language contact between English and Celtic in the period between the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britannia (?AD 449) and the Norman conquest of England (AD 1066) but in some places reaches out to West Germanic times and to the period after the Norman conquest. It focuses on a certain region, that of the Southern Lowlands, mainly Anglo-Saxon Wessex, and deals with evidence that has been mentioned before: (1) the twofold paradigm of ‘to be’ and (2) the Old English designations for Celts that refer to their status as slaves. The article demonstrates that both the syntactic and the lexico-semantic evidence is particularly concentrated in West Saxon texts. Together, both types of evidence are shown to support the assumption that a very substantial Celtic population exerted substratal influence on (pre-)Old English by way of large-scale language shift in one of the early heartlands of England. This substratal Insular Celtic influence on Old English is contrasted with the adstratal Celtic influence on continental West Germanic.
30 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that despite traditional skepticism among most specialists on the history of English that Brythonic Celtic languages could have had any significant structural impact on English's evolution, the source of periphrastic do in Cornish's equivalent construction is virtually impossible to deny on the basis of a wide range of evidence.
Abstract: This article argues that despite traditional skepticism among most specialists on the history of English that Brythonic Celtic languages could have had any significant structural impact on English's evolution, the source of periphrastic do in Cornish's equivalent construction is virtually impossible to deny on the basis of a wide range of evidence. That Welsh and Cornish borrowed the construction from English is impossible given its presence in Breton, whose speakers left Britain in the fifth century. The paucity of Celtic loanwords in English is paralleled by equivalent paucity in undisputed contact cases such as Uralic's on Russian. Traditional language-internal accounts suffer from a degree of ad hocness. Finally, periphrastic do is much rarer cross-linguistically than typically acknowledged, which lends further support to a contact account.
29 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that phonemicisation of a previous allophonic voice alternation in fricatives had already taken place in many areas of Anglo-Saxon England through language contact with Brittonic.
Abstract: Most handbooks and grammars contend that in Old English the voiced fricatives [v, ð, z] were merely allophones of /f, θ, s/ in sonorous environments. How these voiced fricatives became phonemes is debated among scholars. In this article, all previous accounts are critically reviewed. A new proposal is then presented, which explains the facts in a more direct way than previous theses. I argue that phonemicisation of a previous allophonic voice alternation in fricatives had already taken place in many areas of Anglo-Saxon England through language contact with Brittonic. Voiceless as well as voiced fricative phonemes existed in Brittonic at the time of contact, and language shift would have led directly to the phonemicisation of the previous allophonic variation found in early Old English.
28 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that these highly conventionalized close appositions are instances of "inchoate" noun phrase structure, and that the internal constituency of such strings is not fully elaborated due to a lack of strong functional pressure.
Abstract: na-Fari˜ 2006), and on an analysis of a quintessentially close appositive construction, the the poet Burns type in the literature (Curme 1947; Lee 1952; Fries 1952; Haugen 1953; Hockett 1955, 1958). The thesis that these strings are formed by a doubly endocentric structure where the putative first segment (the poet )i s a grounded nominal (i.e. an active referent; e.g. Langacker 1991; Taylor 2002) is rejected. Instead, it is argued that these highly conventionalized close appositions are instances of ‘inchoate’ noun phrase structure, and that the internal constituency of such strings is not fully elaborated due to a lack of strong functional pressure. Three reasons are put forward in order to defend such a view: 1. the construction has as its job the activation of a social referent, and in the social world that we inhabit this is usually done either by name or profession, with no logical incompatibility between the two; 2. the construction is a hybrid of distinct and more productive (and fully elaborated) templates, which act as attractor poles and pull constituency in opposite directions; and 3. the construction is easily identifiable as such ‘from the top’. This makes it unnecessary to have to spend valuable cognitive resources (like creating, storing and deploying inaudible, abstract, constituent structure) when, somewhat metaphorically, one can reach the final destination of that journey (the last stop being meaning) directly, as it were, with no changing of trains (Haiman 1994; Boyland 1996; Hay 2001). The present analysis is framed along lines compatible with various forms of Construction Grammar.
27 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that structural persistence is a structural equivalent to lexical persistence in the sense of Hopper (1991), and that processes of grammaticalization are determined and constrained not only by the source semantics of the grammaticalizing item, but also by the original structure the item occurs in.
Abstract: In this article, it is proposed that processes of grammaticalization are determined and constrained not only by the source semantics of the grammaticalizing item, i.e. lexical persistence in the sense of Hopper (1991), but also by the original structure the item occurs in. This previously unrecognized feature of grammaticalization is referred to as structural persistence. The need to distinguish a structural equivalent to lexical persistence is argued on the basis of a particularly exemplary case, viz. the grammaticalization processes found with one lexically specific set of grammaticalizing elements in English, adjectives of difference such as other, different, various, etc. Before their grammaticalization, these adjectives occur in two different structural configurations, viz. (1) external comparison, in which the adjective describes a relation of difference between the referent of the noun phrase and a second, separately coded, entity, and (2) internal comparison, in which the entities that are said to be different are all denoted by the noun phrase containing the adjective. Even though they undergo the same general semantic process of grammaticalization and delexicalization in both structures, the adjectives acquire a different grammatical function in each of them. The different outcomes of the grammaticalization process can only be explained by relating them to the specific properties of the two source structures.
26 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that Middle English does not have a category of truly subordinate adverbial clauses in -ing, but that such clauses have developed on the basis of semi-coordinate -ing clauses denoting an accompanying circumstance or exemplification/specification.
Abstract: The present article discusses the development of adverbial -ing clauses, so-called ‘converb clauses’, in English. We argue that Middle English does not have a category of truly subordinate adverbial clauses in -ing, but that such clauses have developed on the basis of semi-coordinate -ing clauses denoting an accompanying circumstance or exemplification/specification. In the course of the Middle English period, such clauses began to be reinterpreted as clauses expressing adverbial relations such as time, condition, cause, purpose, etc. Another likely source of converb clauses is participial relative clauses. We see the development of converb clauses as an instance of grammaticalization, as it involves the development of a grammatical means of expressing a rhetorical function, viz. the ‘Nucleus-Satellite’ relation (Mathiessen & Thompson 1988). This grammaticalization process also involves subjectification, given that the source constructions are propositional, while time and cause clauses have textual and expressive functions/meanings. The grammaticalization process was probably also fed by other participial structures – notably the progressive and the gerund, which were being grammaticalized at the same time – and also nonclausal adverbial structures.
25 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that the way in which the West Germanic sound system was reshaped in Old English strongly suggests the operation of a hitherto unrecognized substratum, and that phonetic substratum is strongly reminiscent of Irish rather than British Celtic.
Abstract: It has generally been assumed that Celtic linguistic influence on Old English is limited to a few marginal loanwords. If a language shift had taken place from Celtic to Old English, however, one would expect to find traces of that in Old English phonology and (morpho)syntax. In this article I argue that (1) the way in which the West Germanic sound system was reshaped in Old English strongly suggests the operation of a hitherto unrecognized substratum; (2) that phonetic substratum is strongly reminiscent of Irish rather than British Celtic; (3) the Old Irish phonetic−phonological system provides a more plausible model for reconstructing the phonetics of pre-Roman Celtic in Britain than the British Celtic system. The conclusion is that there is phonetic continuity between pre-Roman British Celtic and Old English, which suggests the presence of a pre-Anglo-Saxon population shifting to Old English.
24 citations
TL;DR: The authors provide an overview of the syntactic, pragmatic and semantic determinants of word-order variation in Modern English, exemplified by the specific case of the use of long passives as order-rearranging devices.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the syntactic, pragmatic and semantic determinants of word-order variation in Modern English, exemplified by the specific case of the use of long passives as order-rearranging devices. Word order in English and in most other SVO languages is affected by a number of factors such as animacy, semantic role, discourse status and syntactic complexity (Sornicola 2006). In this article, which analyses the influence of such factors in the use of long passives, I will try to show that their effects are construction-specific; in particular, that factors which are crucial in determining word order in some constructions - factors such as the animacy of the constituents involved - are entirely overruled by others in the case of Modern English long passives. Corpus data presented here will also serve to address issues pertaining to the nature of the determinants of grammatical variation, such as their independent versus epiphenomenal character, their interactions, and the locus of their effects on word order. © 2009 Cambridge University Press.
TL;DR: In this article, the phonetics and phonology of Early Shetland Scots in comparison to mainland and mainland Scots dialects are analyzed. But they do not provide a systematic analysis of the phonetic and phonological features of the dialect.
Abstract: The dialect of Scots spoken in the Shetland Islands has been variously described as a language shift variety, acquired when the islanders abandoned their native Norn for Scots from the sixteenth century onwards, or a continuation of the dialects brought to Shetland by Scottish immigrants in the same period. More recently, Millar (2008) discussed the origins of Shetland Scots in a theory of new-dialect formation (Trudgill 2004), which allows for a combination of earlier explanations. In this article, I give a systematic analysis of the phonetics and phonology of Early Shetland Scots in comparison to Norn and mainland Scots dialects. The Shetland Scots data are largely consistent with theoretical expectations, lending further support to the new-dialect reading of the dialect's diachronic development.
TL;DR: In this paper, a series of articles have looked at individual early Middle English writing systems and explored aspects of multivocal sound/symbol and symbol/sound relationships and how they may interconnect.
Abstract: In a series of articles we have looked at individual early Middle English writing systems and explored aspects of multivocal sound/symbol and symbol/sound relationships. This article combines previous observations with new material, and provides insights into the genesis of these relations and how they may interconnect. Since many early Middle English texts survive as copies, not originals, they may give clues to the orthographic systems of their exemplars too. We investigate the ‘extensibility’ of Litteral and Potestatic Substitution Sets. Writing systems may be economical or prodigal. The ‘ideal’ economical system would map into a broad phonetic or a phonemic transcription: that is, one ‘sound’, one symbol. In early Middle English there is no one standard written norm, so there is potentially less restraint on diversity than in standard systems. Further extensibility is built into the system. We show that much of what tends to be dismissed as ‘scribal error’ rather represents writing praxis no longer familiar to us – flexible matrices of substitution and variation.
TL;DR: In this paper, the marriage vow in German and English is compared, where the officiant's question is answered by Ja in German but by I will or I do in English.
Abstract: Compared to German Ja and Nein, English Yes and No are used less frequently, and often in combination with short sentences consisting of a pronoun and an auxiliary or modal verb: Yes I will; No I won't. When such a short sentence is used, Yes and No may be omitted: I will; I won't; I do; I don't; He can; They certainly won't. This difference in usage is established (1) by comparing the marriage vow in German and English, where the officiant's question is answered by Ja in German but by I will or I do in English; (2) by citing material from a practical grammar for German students of English; and (3) by studying the way Shakespeare has his figures answer decision questions, or Yes/No-questions, in comparison with Schlegel's way of rendering their answers in his German translation. Next it is shown that Shakespeare's way, which is essentially the same as modern usage, differs radically from earlier English usage up to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1388–1400) and Troilus and Cresseide (1382–6) and the anonymous York Plays (fourteenth century) and Towneley Plays (late fourteenth century), which all reflect the Germanic usage, essentially the same as in German. It is concluded that the modern English usage arose during the two centuries between Chaucer and Shakespeare, as a Late Middle English and Early Modern English innovation. As for the reason why English developed this un-Germanic way of answering decision questions, reference is made to Insular Celtic: decision questions are answered with short sentences in both Irish and Welsh, and this usage is old in both languages. The viability of this contact explanation is underlined by Irish English, where Yes and No are used even less frequently than in Modern Standard English, and short sentences are the normal way of answering decision questions.
TL;DR: It-clefting is a syntactic feature which English shares with the Celtic languages as well as some of its neighbouring western European languages, but not with its Germanic sister languages, especially German as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Recent areal and typological research has brought to light several syntactic features which English shares with the Celtic languages as well as some of its neighbouring western European languages, but not with (all of) its Germanic sister languages, especially German. This study focuses on one of them, viz. the so-called it-cleft construction. What makes the it-cleft construction particularly interesting from an areal and typological point of view is the fact that, although it does not belong to the defining features of so-called Standard Average European (SAE), it has a strong presence in French, which is in the ‘nucleus’ of languages forming SAE alongside Dutch, German, and (northern dialects of) Italian. In German, however, clefting has remained a marginal option, not to mention most of the eastern European languages which hardly make use of clefting at all. This division in itself prompts the question of some kind of a historical-linguistic connection between the Celtic languages (both Insular and Continental), English, and French (or, more widely, Romance languages). Before tackling that question, one has to establish whether it-clefting is part of Old (and Middle) English grammar, and if so, to what extent it is used in these periods. In the first part of this article (sections 2 and 3), I trace the emergence of it-clefts on the basis of data from The York–Toronto–Helsinki Corpus of Old English Prose and The Penn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition. Having established the gradually increasing use of it-clefts from OE to ME, I move on to discuss the areal distribution of clefting among European languages and its typological implications (section 4). This paves the way for a discussion of the possible role played by language contacts, and especially those with the Celtic languages, in the emergence of it-clefting in English (section 5). It is argued that contacts with the Celtic languages provide the most plausible explanation for the development of this feature of English. This conclusion is supported by the chronological precedence of the cleft construction in the Celtic languages, its prominence in modern-period ‘Celtic Englishes’, and close parallels between English and the Celtic languages with respect to several other syntactic features.
TL;DR: In this article, the existence of variation in the syntax of texts belonging to different dialectal varieties in Old English, in particular in relative constructions, has been examined in three versions of the Gospels from late Old English.
Abstract: Old English has traditionally been considered a period of linguistic homogeneity, since most available recorded texts are generally written in the West Saxon dialect. There are, however, isolated texts which have been ascribed to other varieties, in particular Northumbrian and Mercian. In fact, recent research on syntactic dialectology in early English (Kroch & Taylor 1997; Ogura 1999; Hogg 2004, 2006a; Ingham 2006) shows that linguistic variation has been present in the English language from the earliest times. This study reassesses the existence of variation in the syntax of texts belonging to different dialectal varieties in Old English, in particular in relative constructions. Based on an analysis of relative clauses in three versions of the Gospels from late Old English, representing West Saxon, Northumbrian and Mercian dialects, we will observe differences in the texts, regarding both the paradigm of relativizers and the position adopted by the relative clause within the main clause. I relate these differences to the existence of linguistic differences in northern and southern dialects.
TL;DR: The authors found that in spontaneous, unplanned conversations, speakers go as far as emulating each other's grammar and use a family of focusing constructions (namely, the cleft), such as it was my mother who rang the other day, or what I meant to say was that he should go Thursday).
Abstract: It is well known that conversationalists often imitate their own body language as a sign of closeness and empathy. This study shows that in spontaneous, unplanned conversation, speakers go as far as emulating each other's grammar. The use of a family of focusing constructions (namely, the cleft), such as it was my mother who rang the other day, or what I meant to say was that he should go Thursday, was investigated in a corpus of conversation excerpts in New Zealand English. Findings show that clefting is contagious. In other words, if one speaker uses a cleft, others will be likely to do so too.
TL;DR: This article explored the potential of Standard Average European (SAE) as a methodological yardstick for the assessment of the Celticity of Standard English (SE), i.e. the degree to which SE may have been influenced by Insular Celtic languages.
Abstract: My contribution explores the potential of Standard Average European (SAE) as a methodological yardstick for the assessment of the Celticity of Standard English (SE), i.e. the degree to which SE may have been influenced by Insular Celtic languages. SAE allows a quantification of the extent to which SE differs from other SAE languages and at the same time shows similarities with Insular Celtic languages which are generally thought to deviate from SAE. The concept of SAE will be introduced and a complex test case will be analyzed: the rise of identical reflexives and intensifiers and the frequency of ‘labile’ verbs, e.g. to break both intransitive and transitive, in English. Reflexives and intensifiers are identical in Insular Celtic, but separate categories in SAE. According to Haspelmath (1993), labile verbs are unusually frequent in English by SAE standards, and they are also very frequent in Insular Celtic. It will be shown that the frequency of labile verbs in SE and Insular Celtic results from the identity of reflexives and intensifiers in these languages. Since the frequency of labile verbs thus can be shown to be a typologically secondary phenomenon, it is the rise of the new system of identical reflexives and intensifiers in SE which is methodologically the relevant linguistic subsystem within the complex test case for which Insular Celtic influence can be proposed and which can be adduced as an argument in favor of the Celtic hypothesis. For the assessment of the Celtic hypothesis, it will therefore be rewarding to complement the initial comparison of SE and Insular Celtic with further data from SAE and general typology whenever the linguistic subsystems under scrutiny allows the inclusion of such data.
TL;DR: In this paper, it was shown that there is a group of languages for which no such consensus exists, despite a close coexistence between English and these languages in the British Isles spanning more than one and a half millennia.
Abstract: Present-day historians of English are widely agreed that, throughout its recorded history, the English language has absorbed linguistic influences from other languages, most notably Latin, Scandinavian, and French. What may give rise to differing views is the nature and extent of these influences, not the existence of them. Against the backdrop of this unanimity, it seems remarkable that there is one group of languages for which no such consensus exists, despite a close coexistence between English and these languages in the British Isles spanning more than one and a half millennia. This group is, of course, the Insular Celtic languages, comprising the Brittonic subgroup of Welsh and Cornish and the Goidelic one comprising Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic. The standard wisdom, repeated in textbooks on the history of English such as Baugh and Cable (1993), Pyles & Algeo (1993), and Strang (1970), holds that contact influences from Celtic have always been minimal and are mainly limited to Celtic-origin place names and river names and a mere handful of other words. Thus, Baugh & Cable (1993: 85) state that ‘outside of place-names the influence of Celtic upon the English language is almost negligible’; in a similar vein, Strang (1970) writes that ‘the extensive influence of Celtic can only be traced in place-names’ (1970: 391).
TL;DR: This article reported the results of an empirical study of a correlation between the variable placement of these pronouns and their specification for grammatical person, and argued that person is an important aspect of the syntax of these constituents.
Abstract: The variable positioning of bare personal pronouns in Old English prose remains something of a mystery. In the role of prepositional object, for example, these elements are often found in positions where other prepositional object types are rarely attested. This article reports the results of an empirical study of a correlation between the variable placement of these pronouns and their specification for grammatical person. By demonstrating that this correlation defies a number of independent explanations, it is argued that person is an important aspect of the syntax of these constituents. The identification of two further correlations, one involving narrative mode and the other involving the relative positioning of preposition and verb, further demonstrates the value of quantitative methods in historical linguistics.
TL;DR: It seems that what distinguishes BE from SE is not what verbs may follow the associate of the expletive but what elements may precede it, and it is not clear that BE has TECs while SE does not.
Abstract: Henry & Cottell (2007) argue that Belfast English (BE) sentences such as There shouldn't anybody say that and There've lots of people passed the test are transitive expletive constructions (TECs) similar to those that are a feature of Icelandic. They propose that the difference between BE and Standard English (SE) is that whereas expletive there is introduced in Spec vP in the latter it is introduced in Spec TP in the former. On the assumption that transitive subjects originate in Spec vP, this entails that expletive there cannot co-occur with a transitive verb. While it is clear that BE is different from SE in this area, it is not clear that BE has TECs while SE does not. There are a variety of examples which are acceptable in BE but not SE which do not seem to be TECs. SE also has certain examples which might be called TECs. The result of this is that Henry & Cottell's analysis is not very successful. It seems that what distinguishes BE from SE is not what verbs may follow the associate of the expletive but what elements may precede it. SE allows an associate immediately after be, but BE also allows an associate immediately after modals and have, and for some speakers seem and likely as well. The facts can be captured in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar by assuming that be has an extra lexical description with expletive there as its subject and the associate as an extra complement in both varieties of English, and that modals and have, and for some speakers seem and likely as well, have an extra lexical description of this form in BE. Generalizations can be captured if the pairs of lexical descriptions are analysed as alternative ways of fleshing out basic underspecified lexical descriptions. © 2009 Cambridge University Press.
TL;DR: The authors argue that transfer from the British Celtic languages offers a possible explanation for the use of these constructions in the traditional southwestern and west Midlands dialects of English, and they use a possibly related imperative construction, consisting of a preposition or adverb and a to-infinitive, as in out to come! ‘Come out!’ and a negative imperative construction consisting of the negator not and the base form of the verb, asin Not put no sugar in!.
Abstract: A number of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century dialect descriptions refer to an unusual adverb + infinitive construction in southwestern and west Midlands dialects of English. The construction is most often reported in the form of a formulaic phrase away to go , meaning ‘away he went’, though it is also found with a range of other adverbs. In addition, the same dialects also make use of a possibly related imperative construction, consisting of a preposition or adverb and a to -infinitive, as in out to come! ‘Come out!’ and a negative imperative construction consisting of the negator not and the base form of the verb, as in Not put no sugar in!. These construction types appear to be marginal at best in earlier varieties of English, whereas comparable constructions with the verbal noun are a well-established feature of especially British Celtic languages (i.e. Welsh, Breton, and Cornish). In this article I argue that transfer from the British Celtic languages offers a possible explanation for the use of these constructions in the traditional southwestern and west Midlands dialects of English.
TL;DR: In this article, Bailey, Richard W. and Görlach, Manfred, and Smitterberg, E. J. describe a process of integration in 19th-century English.
Abstract: Bailey, Richard W. 1996. 19th-century English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Görlach, Manfred. 1999. English in nineteenth-century England: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Romaine, Suzanne (ed.) 1998. The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 4: 1776 – present day. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smitterberg, Erik. 2005. The progressive in 19th-century English: A process of integration. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
TL;DR: A history of the English language can be found in this article, with a focus on the Middle English language and its evolution from Middle English to Middle English Middle English Creole (MME).
Abstract: Baugh, A. & T. Cable. 2002. A history of the English language. London: Routledge. [reprint of 1993 4th edition] Barber, C. L. 1993. The English language: A historical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Domingue, N. 1977. Middle English: Another creole? Journal of Creole Studies 1(1), 89–100. Lass, Roger. 2004. Phonology and morphology. In Richard Hogg & David Denison (eds.), A history of the English language, 43–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McWhorter, J. 2002. What happened to English? Diachronica 19(2), 217–72. Samuels, M. L. 1972. Linguistic evolution, with special reference to English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomason, Sarah & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language contact, creolization and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.