Historical Linguistics

From its Germanic roots on the Continent, English has had many influences from other languages. This work documents the main influences on the lexicon and the structure. The earliest contacts were with the Romans, when many words were borrowed by the Germanic tribes from Vulgar Latin. In the British Isles, Roman influence continued but the primary influence, though largely substratal, was from Brythonic Celtic. In the later period the Latin influence became largely literary. Meanwhile, Danes settled northeast England, and the contact situation there was complicated but the major result was a high degree of koineization, reflected in major structural innovations shared with East Norse, primarily Old Jutland Danish. Subsequently, the French dominated southeast England and created a superstrate that resulted in Anglo-French on the one hand and the transfer of thousands of words to English on the other. As these words assimilated to the English lexicon, their affixes became an important part of English word formation, productivity beginning as early as the thirteenth century. The result of all this contact was that English preserved little of its Germanic heritage. Later influences were largely restricted to the lexicon and consisted mainly of learned Greek and latinate roots, many of which became standard English, though frequently of a higher register than native roots of similar import, and facilitated scientific word formation.

This is the first volume in a complete history of the documentation of English cant and slang from 1567 to the present. It gives insights into the early history of slang, the people who used it, and how and why it was recorded. Well over a hundred glossaries of cant and slang were published between 1567 and 1784. The cant lists reveal the secret language allegedly used by thieves and beggars to conceal their illicit conspiracies: this book investigates where and how they were produced and the relationship between such lists and canting literature. The book considers why this period was so fascinated by crime and by criminals, and apparently so obsessed with the need to record their language. How far, it asks, are the lists genuine records of contemporary cant, and how far the products of literary invention? Who produced them, and how were they researched? Who bought them, and what did they hope to gain from them? It also provides unusual and unexpected insights into the underworlds of early modern England.

This book is the second volume of the history of the recording and uses of slang and criminal cant and takes the story from 1785 to 1858, and explores their manifestations in the United States and Australia. During this period, glossaries of cant were thrown into the shade by dictionaries of slang, which now covered a broad spectrum of non-standard English, including the language of thieves. This book shows how Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue revolutionized the lexicography of the underworld. It explores the compilation and content of the earliest Australian and American slang glossaries, whose authors included the thrice-transported James Hardy Vaux and the legendary George Matsell, New York City's first chief of police, whose The Secret Language of Crime: The Rogue's Lexicon informed the script of Martin Scorcese's film Gangs of New York. Cant represented a tangible danger to life and property, but slang threatened to undermine good behaviour and social morality. This book shows how and why they were at once repellent and seductive. The book's account casts new light on language and life in some of the darker regions of Great Britain and the English-speaking world.

John Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808) was the first complete dictionary of Scots and is a landmark in the development of historical lexicography. This book is the first full‐scale study of Jamieson’s work on both the Dictionary and the later Supplement of 1825. Using Jamieson’s correspondence and surviving manuscript sources, it traces the evolution of the Dictionary project, from Jamieson’s early linguistic fieldwork to the production and promotion of the Dictionary over twenty years later. It discusses Jamieson’s editorial methods and examines in detail the content of the Dictionary, highlighting Jamieson’s pioneering of the historical method, as well as his innovative use of contemporary and popular sources. It also reveals how Jamieson continually revised and updated his text, aided by a growing number of contributors and specialist consultants – among them Sir Walter Scott – and describes how his work was supplemented by later editors, ensuring that the Dictionary dominated Scots lexicography for over a century, providing inspiration to generations of creative writers, as well as source material for the major historical dictionaries of English and Scots that were to follow.