Understanding Language Change: The Evidence from English

FAIN: FS-10816-78

Wayne O'Neil
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA 02139-4307)

To consider language change in as broad a psychological and cultural context as possible, to study both the formal characteristics of language change and its more general contour and to study the question of why languages, under what conditions, etc. Work will be concentrated on the linguistic aftermath of half a dozen crucial points in the history of English and of England (e.g. the conversion, the Scandinavian settlements, the Conquest).