A Historical Morphology of English

Charting the major developments in the morphology of English, this book introduces students to English inflectional and derivational morphology, presenting them with a long-range perspective of language change. The book is also built around the chronological periods crucial for each type of important large-scale change in the morphology of English, moving from Old, Middle and Early Modern English, to Modern English. The book also explores four sources of linguistic innovation - learner errors in categorical inflectional systems, lexical analogy, productivity in derivational systems and language and dialect contact - illustrating the extent to which the history of English Morphology offers significant information about morphological change in general.