Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Evidence and method in the historical study of English -- Part I. Corpora, Evidence, Method -- The development of free adjuncts in English and Dutch -- Semantic dependencies and the history of ellipsis alternation -- The phrasal verb in American English: Using corpora to track down historical trends in particle distribution, register variation, and noun collocations -- On the grammaticalization of the thing is and related issues in the history of American English -- Alfredian īo ~ ēo, reluctant function words, and Schriftbilder -- Part II. Reconfiguring History: Overlooked Evidence of English -- Metrical resolution, spelling, and the reconstruction of Old English syllabification -- The shortest history of vowel lengthening in English -- Vowel system restructuring in the West Midlands of England -- Style and politics in The Battle of Brunanburh and The Battle of Maldon -- Trinitarian terminology in Old English liturgical creeds -- Part III. Emerging Paradigms: New Methods, New Evidence -- Ælc þara þe þas min word gehierþ and þa wyrcþ ... : Psycholinguistic perspectives on early Englishes -- Complex systems and the history of the English language -- An ideological history of the English term onomatopoeia -- Name index -- Subject index