For the Official Published Version, See Lingua 133 (Sept. 2013), Pp. 73–83. Link
For the official published version, see Lingua 133 (Sept. 2013), pp. 73–83. Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00243841 External Influences on English: From its Beginnings to the Renaissance, D. Gary Miller, Oxford University Press (2012), xxxi + 317 pp., Price: £65.00, ISBN 9780199654260 Lexical borrowing aside, external influences are not the main concern of most histories of the English language. It is therefore timely, and novel, to have a history of English (albeit only up to the Renaissance period) that looks at English purely from the perspective of external influences. Miller assembles his book around five strands of influence: (1) Celtic, (2) Latin and Greek, (3) Scandinavian, (4) French, (5) later Latin and Greek input, and he focuses on influences that left their mark on contemporary mainstream English rather than on regional or international varieties. This review looks at all chapters, but priority is given to Miller’s discussions of structural influence, especially on English syntax, morphology and phonology, which often raise a number of theoretical issues. Loanwords from various sources, which are also covered extensively in the book, will receive slightly less attention. Chapter 1 introduces the Indo-European and Germanic background of English and gives short descriptions of the languages with which English came into contact. This is a good way to start the book, but the copious lists of loanwords from Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, Low German, Afrikaans etc., most of which appear in English long after the Renaissance stop-off point, were not central to its aims. It would have been better to use this space to expand upon the theoretical framework employed throughout the book.
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