Frontmatter -- Table of contents -- Part one -- Developments in Early English and other Germanic languages -- Palatalized and velarized consonants in English against their Germanic background, with special reference to i-umlaut -- On syllable cut in the Orrmulum -- Evolution of the a-verse in English alliterative meter -- Part two -- Early Modern English lexicography -- On the stress-shifting of polysyllabic French loans in English -- The two tongues of Early Modern English -- Part three -- The history of the English language and its scholarship: reconsiderations and resolutions about the way forward -- Off the shelf or under the counter? On the social dynamics of sound changes -- The relevance of community language studies to HEL: The view from Roswell -- Diachronic aspects of complementation: Constructions, entrenchment, and the matching problem -- Patterns of seeking and breaking silence in earlier English -- Henry Machyn's English: Getting it right -- The dialectal origins of the language of Henry Machyn -- Archaisms and neologisms in the language of Beowulf -- Backmatter