History of English
Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Normans Middle English Norman conquest Early Modern English Battle of Hastings Present Day English (PDE) Edward the Confessor Celts Harold Godwinson Romans William of Normandy (William the Conqueror) Anglo-Saxons Norman French Beowulf Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales King Alfred (Alfred the Great) William Caxton, printing press Vikings, Danes Great English Vowel Shift Canute (Cnut) King James Bible Danelaw, Watling Street colonialism Shakespeare standardization (of language, of spelling) Noah Webster British vs. American spellingsWords in English
native synonyms prescriptivism borrowed polysemy descriptivism nativized, nativization homonyms standard, nonstandard loanword, borrowing doublets
Morphology
morpheme compounds, compounding root folk etymology affix blending prefix clipping suffix filler or linker morpheme inflection parse, parsing derivation zero-derivationAllomorphy
allomorphs, allomorphy assimilation ablaut metathesis insertion deletion weakening rhotacism
© 2008
Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 5 Oct 08