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The multilingual roots of English. The birth of a lingua franca

Libro di   Thomas Christiansen

The multilingual roots of English. The birth of a lingua franca Libro di  Thomas Christiansen
€ 40, 00
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'This book examines with a critical eye the standard narrative regarding the evolution of Old and Middle English, according to which English appeared in the 5th century out of an amalgam of supposedly related West Germanic languages, later simplified by contact with Old Norse, and then refined by mixing with Norman French. Other versions of events, not least the Celtic hypothesis, and perhaps the existence of Germanic languages in Britain before the arrival of the Romans, will be presented as credible alternative accounts. Discussion will not be limited to linguistic data, which unfortunately is often lacking or open to different interpretations, but will also draw upon the work of historians, archaeologists and geneticists. Their observations provide the relevant background for a better understanding of the main ethnic and social characteristics of the environment within which English was to evolve. In the individual chapters, the perspective of the main different ethnic groupings (themselves seen as fluid identities) will be dealt with in turn, focusing on the contribution of each (through such processes as accommodation, adaption, code mixing and translanguaging) to the (...).

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