The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language / David Crystal.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

1. Modelling English -- pt. I. The history of English -- 2. The origins of English -- 3. Old English -- Early borrowings -- Runes -- The Old English corpus -- Literary texts -- The Anglo-Saxon chronicle -- Spelling -- Sounds -- Grammar -- Vocabulary -- Late borrowings -- Dialects -- 4. Middle English -- French and English -- The transition from Old English -- The Middle English corpus -- Literary texts -- Chaucer -- Spelling -- Sounds -- Grammar -- Vocabulary -- Latin borrowings -- Dialects -- Middle Scots -- The origins of standard English -- 5. Early modern English -- Caxton -- Transitional texts -- Renaissance English -- The inkhorn controversy -- Shakespeare -- The King James bible -- Spelling and regularization -- Punctuation -- Sounds -- Grammar -- Vocabulary -- The academy debate -- Johnson -- 6. Modern English -- Transition -- Grammatical trends -- Prescriptivism -- American English -- Breaking the rules -- Variety awareness -- Scientific language -- Literary voices -- Dickens -- Recent trends -- 7. World English -- The new world -- American dialects -- Canada -- Black English vernacular -- Australia -- New Zealand -- South Africa -- South Asia -- West Africa -- East Africa -- South-Est Asia and the South Pacific -- A world language -- Numbers of speakers -- Standard English -- The future of English -- English threatened and as threat -- pt. II. English vocabulary -- 8. The nature of the lexicon -- Lexemes -- The size of the English lexicon -- Abbreviations -- Proper names -- The size of a person's lexicon -- 9. The sources of the lexicon -- Native vocabulary -- Foreign borrowings -- Word-formation -- Unusual structures -- Lexical creation -- Literary neologism -- 10. Etymology -- Lexical history -- Semantic change -- Folk etymology -- Place names -- Surnames -- First names -- Nicknames -- Object names -- Eponyms -- 11. The structure of the lexicon -- Semantic structure -- Semantic fields -- Dictionary and thesaurus -- Collocations -- Lexical predictability -- Idioms -- Synonyms -- Antonyms -- Hyponyms -- Incompatibility -- Other sense relations -- 12. Lexical dimensions -- Loaded vocabulary -- Taboo -- Swearing -- Jargon -- Doublespeak -- Political correctness -- Catch phrases -- Vogue words -- Slogans -- Graffiti -- Slang -- Quotations -- Proverbs -- Archaisms -- Clichés -- Last words --

pt. III. English grammar -- 13. Grammatical mythology -- The nature of grammar -- Knowing vs knowing about -- Traditional grammar -- Prescriptive grammar -- The 20th-century legacy -- The main branches of grammar -- 14. The structure of words -- Morphology -- Suffixation -- Adjectives -- Nouns -- The apostrophe -- Pronouns -- Verbs -- 15. Word classes -- Parts of speech -- Traditional definitions -- New classes -- Nouns -- Pronouns -- Adjectives -- Adverbs -- Verbs -- Prepositions -- Conjunctions -- Interjections -- 16. The structure of sentences -- Spoken and written syntax -- Types of sentence -- Sentence structure -- Sentence functions -- Clause elements and types -- Phrases-- Noun phrases -- Verb phrases -- Multiple sentences -- Abbreviation -- Disjuncts and comment clauses -- Reporting speech -- Sentence information -- Beyond the sentence -- pt. IV. Spoken and written English -- 17. The sound system -- Phonetics and phonology -- Vocal organs -- Vowels -- Consonants -- Syllables -- Connected speech -- Prosody -- Sound symbolism -- Pronunciation in practice -- 18. The writing system -- Graphetics and graphology -- Typography -- The alphabet -- Properties of letters -- Letter frequency -- Letter distribution -- Letter symbolism -- Analysing handwriting -- Graphetic variety -- Spelling -- Sources of irregularity -- Spelling reform -- Punctuation -- The development of the writing system --

pt. V. Using English -- 19. Varieties of discourse -- Structure vs use -- Pragmatic issues -- The nature of discourse -- Microlinguistic studies -- Texts and varieties -- Speech vs writing -- Mixed medium -- Monologue and dialogue -- 20. Regional variation -- Accent and dialect -- International and intranational -- A day in the life of the language -- American and British English -- American dialects -- British dialects -- Scotland -- Wales -- Ireland -- Canada -- Caribbean -- Pidgins and Creoles -- Australia -- New Zealand -- South Africa -- New Englishes -- 21. Social variation -- Sociolinguistic perspective -- Received pronunciation -- Prescriptive attitudes -- Gender -- Occupation -- Religion -- Science -- Law -- Plain English -- Politics -- News media -- Journalism -- Broadcasting -- Weather forecasting -- Sports commentary -- Advertising -- Restricted varieties -- New varieties -- 22. Personal variation -- Individual differences -- Deviance -- Word games -- Rule-breaking varieties -- The edges of language -- Jokes and puns -- Comic alphabets -- Variety humour -- Literary freedom -- Phonetics and phonology -- Graphetics and graphology -- Grammar and lexicon -- Discourse and variety -- Stylometry -- pt. VI. Learning about English -- 23. Learning English as a mother tongue -- Child language acquisition -- Literacy -- Grammatical development -- Early words and sounds -- Reading and writing -- Insufficient language -- Language disability -- 24. New ways of studying English -- Technological revolution -- Corpus studies -- National and international corpora -- Dictionaries -- Innovations -- Sources and resources -- Appendices -- I. Glossary -- II. Special symbols and abbreviations -- III. References -- IV. Further reading -- V. Index of linguistic items -- VI. Index of authors and personalities -- VII. Index of topics.