The essays of this volume employ diverse strategies for conceptualizing the history of English as at once chaotic and yet amenable to circumscribed analyses that incorporate a broad view of language change. Several of the world's leading scholars of the English language contribute to the overall perspective that an elaboration of linguistic, cultural, and social contexts and a renewed emphasis on the concrete historical conditions of language change are necessary to approach some long-standing obstacles in the study of the history of the English language. Designed for students, teachers, and scholars of the English language, Managing Chaos: Strategies for Identifying Change in English (SHEL III) presents studies on all periods of the English language in a variety of theoretical and methodological modes. Highlights include Anatoly Liberman's sweeping comparative revision of the history of palatalized and velarized consonants in English; William Kretzschmar's (et al.) wittily illuminating study of a suburban Atlanta, Georgia town that epitomizes the specific ways in which inter-regional linguistic variation can be maintained while local social factors drive dramatic change on an intra-regional level; Lesley Milroy's innovative analysis of recent unitary changes in global Englishes that cannot be accounted for by classic Labovian models that situate language change within small, close networks of speakers who mediate variation in face-to-face interactions, an observation that leads Milroy to propose two distinct but cross-influencing levels of social dynamics in language change. All of the essays of this volume include careful critiques of the construction of our present understanding of the history of English, thus marking the path behind while shining a light on the way ahead for the future of the discipline.

In this fascinating study, Geoffrey Russom traces the evolution of the major English poetic traditions by reference to the evolution of the English language, and considers how verse forms are born, how they evolve, and why they die. Using a general theory of poetic form employing universal principles rooted in the human language faculty, Russom argues that certain kinds of poetry tend to arise spontaneously in languages with identifiable characteristics. Language changes may require modification of metrical rules and may eventually lead to extinction of a meter. Russom's theory is applied to explain the development of English meters from the earliest alliterative poems in Old and Middle English and the transition to iambic meter in the Modern English period. This thorough yet accessible study provides detailed analyses of form in key poems, including Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and a glossary of technical terms.

This is a clear and accessible account of early Germanic alliterative verse that explains how such verse was treated by the Beowulf poet. There are differences of poetic style between Beowulf and the otherwise similar verse of ancient Scandinavia and continental Europe. Such distinctions have intrigued scholars for over a century, but Russom is the first to provide a systematic explanation of Old English, Old Norse, Old Saxon and Old High German alliterative meters. Russom's results should interest scholars of Old English and related Germanic languages, as well as linguists and those concerned with poetic meter.

Prior to the publication of this volume in 1987, scholars interested in Old English alliterative meter discovered a number of intriguing restrictions on verse form, and their discoveries proved useful in the editing of texts and in research on the early history of the English language. It had proved impossible up to this point however, to capture these restrictions in a plausible system of rules. In this book Professor Russom obtained a coherent and comprehensive rule system using the insights of linguistic theory. The rules of this system apply not just to stress and syllable count but to other features of word structure as well. Russom claims, in particular, that the concept of 'metrical foot' appropriate for analysis of Old English poetry corresponds to the concept of 'word pattern' used in linguistic analysis. In Old English Meter and Linguistic Theory the author explains these rules carefully, justifies then from a linguistic point of view and goes on to apply them to a wide variety of problems. The results should interest not only those who deal with Old English texts, but also metrists and linguistics generally.

This 1998 book is a clear and accessible account of early Germanic alliterative verse which explains how such verse was treated by the Beowulf poet. There are differences of poetic style between Beowulf and the otherwise similar verse of ancient Scandinavia and continental Europe. Such distinctions have intrigued scholars for over a century, but Russom is the first to provide a systematic explanation of Old English, Old Norse, Old Saxon, and Old High German alliterative metres. The system of alliterative rules described by Russom derives from ordinary language; the rules change with language over historical time, rather than persisting as arbitrary restrictions. Once the relations between language and metre are identified, it is possible to see how language change yielded the divergent metrical practices which gave each tradition its special character. Russom's results should interest scholars of Old English and related Germanic languages, as well as linguists and those concerned with poetic metre.