Early Modern English

by Alexander Bergs (Editor), Alexander Bergs (Editor)

This volume provides a comprehensive account of Early Modern English, organized by linguistic level. The volume not only presents detailed outlines of the traditional language levels, it also explores key questions and debates, such as do-periphrasis, the Great Vowel Shift, pronouns and relativization, literary language (including the language of Shakespeare), and sociolinguistics, including contact and standardization.

344 pages, Paperback

Published October 23, 2017

About the author

Alexander Bergs joined the Institute of English and American Studies at Osnabrück University, Germany, in 2006 when he became Full Professor and Chair of English Language and Linguistics. His research interests include, among others, language variation and change, constructional approaches to language, the role of context in language, the syntax/pragmatics interface and cognitive poetics. His works include several authored and edited books (Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics, Modern Scots, Contexts and Constructions, Constructions and Language Change), a short textbook on Synchronic English Linguistics, one on Understanding Language Change (with Kate Burridge) and the two-volume Handbook of English Historical Linguistics (ed. with Laurel Brinton; now available as 5 volume paperback) as well as more than seventy papers in high profile international journals and edited volumes.
Alexander Bergs has taught at the Universities of Düsseldorf, Bonn, Santiago de Compostela, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Catania, Vigo, Thessaloniki, Athens, and Dalian and has organized numerous international workshops and conferences.
Apart from several terms as Director of the Institute of English and American Studies, as Dean of the Faculty of Linguistics and Literatures, and as member of the University Senate, he is one of the founders and directors of the Research Cluster for Cognition and Poetics at the University of Osnabrück.