Essays bringing out the crucial importance of philology for understanding Old English texts. Robert D. Fulk is arguably the greatest Old English philologist to emerge during the twentieth century; his corpus of scholarship has fundamentally shaped contemporary understanding of many aspects of Anglo-Saxon literary historyand English historical linguistics. This volume, in his honour, brings together essays which engage with his work and advance his research interests. Scholarship on historical metrics and the dating, editing, and interpretation of Old English poetry thus forms the core of this book; other topics addressed include syntax, phonology, etymology, lexicology, and paleography. An introductory overview of Professor Fulk's achievements puts these studies in context, alongside essays which assess his contributions to metrical theory and his profound impact on the study of Beowulf. By consolidating and augmenting Fulk's research, this collection takes readers to the cutting edgeof Old English philology. LEONARD NEIDORF is Professor of English at Nanjing University; RAFAEL J. PASCUAL is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University; TOM SHIPPEY is Professor Emeritus at St Louis University. Contributors: Thomas Cable, Christopher M. Cain, George Clark, Dennis Cronan, Daniel Donoghue, Aaron Ecay, Mark Griffith, Megan E. Hartman, Stefan Jurasinski, Anatoly Liberman, Donka Minkova, Haruko Momma, Rory Naismith, Leonard Neidorf, Andy Orchard, Rafael J. Pascual, Susan Pintzuk, Geoffrey Russom, Tom Shippey, Jun Terasawa, Charles D. Wright.

"Millions of people want to know the origin of the words they use. Word columns in daily newspapers and numerous books attempt to satisfy their curiosity. Word histories are usually digested like pills: the user is interested in getting well, not in the chemistry of the prescribed medication. Those who send letters to the Editor also want a straight answer without bothering about how "editors" come by their knowledge. Therefore, they fail to realize that etymologies are seldom definitive and that the science of etymology is intensely interesting. Perhaps if someone explained to them that, compared to the drama of words, Hamlet is a light farce, they might develop a more informed attitude toward philological research and become students of historical linguistics rather than gullible consumers of journalists' pap." This is how Anatoly Liberman begins Etymology for Everyone, the only guide to the science and process of etymology for the layperson. This funny, charming, and conversational book not only tells the known origins of hundreds of words, but also shows how their origins were determined. Liberman, a world-renowned etymologist, takes the reader by the hand and explains the many ways that English words can be made, and the many ways in which etymologists try to unearth the origins of words. Part history, part how-to, and completely entertaining, Etymology for Everyone invites readers behind the scenes to watch an etymologist at work.

Three centuries of English idioms—their unusual origins and unexpected interpretations To pay through the nose. Raining cats and dogs. By hook or by crook. Curry favor. Drink like a fish. Eat crow. We hear such phrases every day, but this book is the first truly all-encompassing etymological guide to both their meanings and origins. Spanning more than three centuries, Take My Word for It is a fascinating, one-of-a-kind window into the surprisingly short history of idioms in English. Widely known for his studies of word origins, Anatoly Liberman explains more than one thousand idioms, both popular and obscure, occurring in both American and British standard English and including many regional expressions. The origins, and even the precise meaning, of most idioms are often obscure and lost in history. Based on a critical analysis of countless conjectures, with exact, in-depth references (rare in the literature on the subject), Take My Word for It provides not only a large corpus of idiomatic phrases but also a vast bibliography. Detailed indexes and a thesaurus make the content accessible at a glance, and Liberman’s introduction and conclusion add historical dimensions. The result of decades of research by a leading authority, this book is both instructive and absorbing for scholars and general readers, who won’t find another resource as comparable in scope or based on data even remotely as exhaustive.

If you've ever read the history of a word like "silly" and wondered how the author knew that it meant "blessed" in the eleventh century, this is the book for you. Written in a funny, charming, and conversational style, Word Origins is the first book to offer a thorough investigation of the history and the science of etymology, making this little-known field accessible to everyone interested in the history of words.
Anatoly Liberman, an internationally acclaimed etymologist, takes the reader by the hand and explains the many ways that English words can be made, and the many ways in which etymologists try to unearth the origins of words. Every chapter is packed with dozens of examples of proven word histories, used to illustrate the correct ways to trace the origins of words--as well as some of the egregiously bad ways to trace them. He not only tells the known origins of hundreds of words, but also shows how their origins were determined. And along the way, the reader is treated to a wealth of fascinating word facts. Did they once have "bells" in a "belfry"? No, the original meaning of "belfry" was "siege tower." Are the words "isle" and "island," "raven" and "ravenous," or "pan" and "pantry" related etymologically? No, though they look strikingly similar, these words came to English via different routes.
Partly a history, partly a how-to, and completely entertaining, Word Origins invites readers behind the scenes to watch an etymologist at work.

Edited and with an introduction by Anatoly Liberman Translated by Marvin Taylor and Anatoly LibermanN. S. Trubetzkoy (1890-1939) is generally celebrated today as the creator of the science of phonology. While his monumental Grundzuge der Phonologie was published posthumously and contains a summary of Trubetzkoy's late views on the linguistic function of speech sounds, there has, until now, been no practical way to trace the development of his thought or to clarify the conclusions appearing in that later work. With the publication of Studies in General Linguistics and Language Structure, not only will linguists have that opportunity, but a collection of Trubetzkoy's work will appear in English for the first time. Translated from the French, German, and Russian originals, these articles and letters present Trubetzkoy's work in general and on Indo-European linguistics. The correspondence reprinted here, also for the first time in English, is between Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson. The resulting collection offers a view of the evolution of Trubetzkoy's ideas on phonology, the logic in laws of linguistic geography and relative chronology, and the breadth of his involvement with Caucasian phonology and the Finno-Ugric languages. A valuable resource, this volume will make Trubetzkoy's work available to a larger audience as it sheds light on problems that remain at the center of contemporary linguistics.

Edited and with an introduction by Anatoly Liberman
Translated by Marvin Taylor and Anatoly Liberman

N. S. Trubetzkoy (1890-1939) is generally celebrated today as the creator of the science of phonology. While his monumental "Grundzuge der Phonologie" was published posthumously and contains a summary of Trubetzkoy's late views on the linguistic function of speech sounds, there has, until now, been no practical way to trace the development of his thought or to clarify the conclusions appearing in that later work. With the publication of "Studies in General Linguistics and Language Structure," not only will linguists have that opportunity, but a collection of Trubetzkoy's work will appear in English for the first time.
Translated from the French, German, and Russian originals, these articles and letters present Trubetzkoy's work in general and on Indo-European linguistics. The correspondence reprinted here, also for the first time in English, is between Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson. The resulting collection offers a view of the evolution of Trubetzkoy's ideas on phonology, the logic in laws of linguistic geography and relative chronology, and the breadth of his involvement with Caucasian phonology and the Finno-Ugric languages.
A valuable resource, this volume will make Trubetzkoy's work available to a larger audience as it sheds light on problems that remain at the center of contemporary linguistics.

Germanic Accentology was first published in 1982. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The Scandinavian languages are among the few living Indo-European languages that possess a ramified system of special tones or accents. Such accents are widespread in the languages of Africa and Asia (creating, for example, the singsong character of Chinese and Vietnamese), but in the vast territory occupied by the Indo-European family only the Scandinavian languages, some German dialects, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Serbo- Croatian have similar accetologies. The function and origin of the Scandinavian accents are central problems facing linguists and are the issues that Anatoly Liberman confronts in this book. Liberman uses the methods of synchronic and diachronic phonology to explore the current status of Scandinavian accentology and to reconstruct its historical development. In the first, synchronic, group of chapters he analyzes the accents and accent-like phenomena in all the modern Scandinavian languages, comparing the literary languages with spoken dialects, and drawing from all of the published descriptions of and theories about Scandinavian prosody. In the final, diachronic, chapter he presents a new hypothesis on the origins of Scandinavian accentology based upon his descriptive material. Throughout, his theoretical approach is that of a functionalist.