Why more histories of the English Language?

Abstract

Review of Hogg, Richard M., 'The Cambridge History of the English Language', vol. I, 'The Beginnings to 1066', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, xxiii, 609pp., £60.00. and Baugh, A.C., and T. Cable, 'A History of the English Language', London, Routledge, 4th edn., 1993, xvi, 444 pp., £12.99 paper. The initial volume here is the first in what is "the first multi-volume work to provide a full account of the history of English". Like the other five it aims to give an authoritative coverage of areas of central linguistic interest and concern and adequate treatment to more specialised topics relating to English. Thus there are here, after Richard Ho 's introductory chapter, the following comprehensive surveys: "The Place of English in Germanic and Indo-European", by Alfred Bammesberger; "Phonology and Morphology", by the named editor; "Syntax", by Elizabeth Closs Traugott; "Semantics and Vocabulary", by Dieter Kastovsky; "Old English Dialects", by Thomas E. Toon; "Onomastics" (with as generous a section on anthroponymy as that on the more obvious toponymy), by Cecily Clark; and "Literary Language", by Malcolm R. Godden - the whole followed by a generous glossary of linguistic terms, and a bibliography which is particularly rich as to secondary sources.