©D.W. Mosser

H  E  L

©D.W. Mosser

History of the English Language

To subscribe to our discussion list (HEL-L), click on the following URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/hel-l and follow the instructions for subscribing.

A searchable archive of the HEL-L discussion list is maintained at the LINGUIST web site. To go directly to the HEL-L archive, 1994-Present, click here.

Archives for other discussion lists with a linguistic bent at the LINGUIST site are also available.

Pre History

• Indo-European
  • Everything you ever wanted to know about Proto-Indo-European (and the comparative method), but were afraid to ask! (useful bibliography included)...
• Nostratic Bibliography
  • A listing of references pertaining to "Nostratic" compiled by HEL-L...
  • "What We All Spoke When the World Was Young" (New York Times, Feb. 1, 2000): article on Joseph Greenberg and Eurasiatic
• What do you want to know today?
  • A site at the University of Kentucky where, among other things, one can find Latin, Greek, German, and Sanskrit dictionaries.
• Edward Prokosch, A COMPARATIVE GERMANIC GRAMMAR, is available at the ridiculously modest price of $6.00 from the Linguistic Society of America
• Germanic Linguistics

Old English Period

• The Dictionary of Old English / Old English Corpus
• ANSAXDAT
  • A searchable database of materials generated by the Ansaxnet discussion list. (now on the Web!)
• Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: A Register of Written Sources Used by Authors in Anglo-Saxon England
  • is intended to identify all written sources which were incorporated, quoted, translated or adapted anywhere in English or Latin texts which were written in Anglo-Saxon England (i.e. England to 1066), or by Anglo-Saxons in other countries.
• MANCASS C11 Database
  • Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, Inventory of Script Categories and Spellings in Eleventh-Century English
• Old Norse Links
• The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records
• Cynewulf's Elene (Elizabeth Trelenberg's e-edition)
• Wuflstan's Sermo Lupi ad Anglos
  • Melissan Bernstein's 1996 hypertext edition
• Anglo-Saxon Charms (Karen Jolly's translations)
• The "Dream of the Rood" and the Ruthwell Cross
• The Ruthwell Cross
• Mac users will want to download the Times OE font and set their browser defaults to that font...
• Ælfric's Homilies on Judith, Esther, and the Maccabees (ed. Stuart Lee)
• Anglo-Saxonists from the 16th through the 20th Century
  • Carl Berkhout's bibliography of five hundred years of Anglo-Saxon scholars and scholarship ...
• Old English Resources
  • Links to e-texts, instructional software, MS images, fonts, CD-ROM, and Anglo-Saxon clip-art...
• Lindisfarne Gospels
• An Eleventh-Century Anglo-Saxon glossary, Bibliotheque Royale Albert Ier, Bruxelles, MS Brussels, RL 1650, folio 55^v, an edition of which is provided by David W. Porter on the World Wide Web.
• Preface to a manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Peterborough Abbey, c.1121 (Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 636, fol. 1^r).
• Learning Old English (Tony Jebson)
• Murray McGillivray's Online Old English course
• Icelandic Manuscript Collection (The Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland)

Middle English Period

• Online Medieval and Classical Library
• Juris Lidaka's handout on ME Versions of Psalm 23
• Juris Lidaka's unit on Boethius' Former Age through the ages (for Mac users, thorns appear as '?').
• UVa Middle English Texts
  • Middle English texts in electronic format (University of Virginia)...
• The Glossarial Database of Middle English
  • Glossaries for Chaucer, Gower, and more (Harvard University)...
• The Middle English Compendium (demonstration version)
• The Middle English Compendium Virginia Tech Library Access Only (Middle English Dictionary, HyperBibliography of ME Prose and Verse, and and extensive collection of ME prose and verse texts). Virginia Tech access only: click here to access the Library's "M" database index page and scroll down the the Middle English Compendium.
• Engelond: Resources for 14th-Century English Studies (Linda Voigts: Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City)

Early Modern English

• The Great Vowel Shift (Harvard Chaucer Site)
• Melinda Menzer's Great Vowel Shift site
• Renascence Editions
• Works of Shakespeare
• King James Bible
• Renaissance & 17th-Century Texts (Voice of the Shuttle @ UCSB)
• Samuel Johnson (page is maintained by Jack Lynch). Includes lots of Johnson texts, most notably for this site:
  • The Plan of an English Dictionary
  • The Preface to The Dictionary of the English Language

American & Present-Day Englishes

• American Dialect Society Web Page (note: this is a revised URL as of 12/9/98)
• Phonological Atlas of North America (University of Pennsylvania)
• BritSpeak
• Lowlands-L
  • Join discussion lists for topics on Lowlands languages
  • Links to pages on English, Afrikaans, Frisian, Dutch, English, Scots, and Pidgins & Creoles ....
• American Sign Language Linguistic Research Project
• American Slanguages
• World Wide Words
• English Only
  • Lingo Jingo: English Only and the New Nativism, by Geoffrey Nunberg
  • Iowa Passes "English Only" Measure (2/27/02)
  • U.S. English (advocates for English Only)

Course Syllabi/Syllabuses & Class Materials

• The History of English Phonemes (Bill Rogers, Furman University)
• Snake's Home Page
  • Ed Duncan's Home Page, containing a HEL syllabus, links to electronic texts from every chronological stage of the language, and a link to a Hypertext Webster's Dictionary....
  • Ed Duncan's History of the English Language, Spring 2000 syllabus
• Dan Mosser's HEL syllabi/syllabuses
  • Spring 1997
  • Spring 1998
  • Spring 1999
  • Spring 2000
  • Spring 2001
  • Spring 2002
  • Spring 2005
• Susan-Marie Harrington's HEL syllabus
  • Bibliography on the Development of Standard English
• Brian Zahn's Online Dictionary of Linguistic Terminology
• John Lawler's Freshman etymology course, "A World of Words"

Conferences/Workshops

• Studies in the History of the English Language
  • A Conference held at UCLA, May 2000
• History of the English Language: A Panel on Pedagogy (Abstracts and Papers, SEMA 10/01)

Please contact Dan Mosser () with questions or suggestions about this site.

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