| Preface | p. xiii |
| Conventions, symbols and abbreviations | p. xvii |
| Introduction and caveats: the notion 'Old English' | p. 1 |
| A note on handbooks | p. 5 |
| Historical prelude | |
| Background and origins | p. 9 |
| History in linguistic description | p. 9 |
| Indo-European and Germanic | p. 10 |
| The attestation of Germanic | p. 12 |
| Classification of the Germanic languages | p. 13 |
| Indo-European to Proto-Germanic to West Germanic | p. 17 |
| Germanic: an innovation cluster | p. 17 |
| Formation of the PGmc vowel system | p. 18 |
| The IE consonants: Grimm's Law | p. 19 |
| The Accent Shift and Verner's Law | p. 21 |
| Recapitulation: PGmc phonological systems | p. 24 |
| Some further remarks on PGmc phonology | p. 24 |
| Features of Northwest Germanic | p. 25 |
| West Germanic | p. 27 |
| Old English Phonology | |
| Evolution of Old English phonology: the major early sound changes | p. 33 |
| Sound change and linguistic structure | p. 33 |
| West Germanic Gemination | p. 34 |
| Pre-nasal vowels in Ingvaeonic and Anglo-Frisian | p. 38 |
| West Germanic */[alpha]:/ and */[alpha]i/ in Ingvaeonic | p. 39 |
| Anglo-Frisian Brightening, Restoration of [alpha] and the /ae/:/[alpha]/ opposition | p. 41 |
| Diphthongs old and new: Breaking and related processes | p. 45 |
| 'Long' and 'short' diphthongs | p. 45 |
| Breaking, retraction and Diphthong Height Harmony | p. 48 |
| Back umlaut | p. 51 |
| Morphophonemic effects of diphthongization | p. 52 |
| Palatalization | p. 53 |
| I-umlaut | p. 59 |
| From allophonic rule to phonemic contrast | p. 59 |
| I-umlaut in detail | p. 64 |
| I-umlaut and Old English morphology | p. 70 |
| The fricatives: voicing, devoicing, hardening and deletion | p. 71 |
| OE /f, [theta], s/ | p. 71 |
| The velars | p. 74 |
| Fricative hardening and its consequences | p. 76 |
| Appendix: 'Palatal Diphthongization' | p. 78 |
| Suprasegmentals | p. 83 |
| Suprasegmentals | p. 83 |
| Germanic stress and Old English stress | p. 84 |
| Stress rules and 'degrees of stress' | p. 84 |
| The Germanic Stress Rule | p. 87 |
| Old English stress | p. 91 |
| Major developments in weak syllables | p. 95 |
| Final reduction and loss | p. 95 |
| High Vowel Deletion and medial syncope | p. 98 |
| Morphophonemic intermezzo | |
| Ablaut, the laryngeals and the IE root | p. 105 |
| The basic alternations | p. 105 |
| The conditioning of ablaut | p. 107 |
| The laryngeals: 'Irregular' ablaut regularized and a new look for IE root-structure | p. 109 |
| Roots and extensions | p. 114 |
| Zero-grade revisited | p. 116 |
| Appendix: consonantal alternations | p. 118 |
| Morphology, lexis and syntax | |
| Inflectional morphology, I: nouns, pronous, determiners and adjectives | p. 123 |
| The noun | p. 123 |
| Root vs. stem, thematic vs. athematic | p. 123 |
| IE noun-inflection: gender, number, case | p. 126 |
| The major noun classes | p. 129 |
| A note in retrospect | p. 138 |
| Pronouns and determiners | p. 139 |
| Personal pronouns | p. 139 |
| 'Definite article'/demonstrative | p. 142 |
| Interrogative pronouns | p. 145 |
| The adjective | p. 146 |
| The basic inflections | p. 146 |
| Comparison | p. 149 |
| Inflectional morphology, II: The verb | p. 151 |
| Historical preliminaries | p. 151 |
| The strong verb | p. 153 |
| Ablaut in the strong verb, classes I-V | p. 153 |
| The strong verb, classes VI-VII | p. 158 |
| The strong past participle | p. 161 |
| Infinitive and present participle (strong and weak) | p. 162 |
| The weak verb | p. 164 |
| The weak preterite suffix and past participle | p. 164 |
| The weak verb classes | p. 166 |
| Preterite presents and minor verb types | p. 169 |
| Preterite presents | p. 169 |
| Athematic root verbs and 'to be' | p. 170 |
| Person/number/mood inflection | p. 172 |
| The strong verb | p. 172 |
| The weak verb: present system | p. 174 |
| The weak verb: preterite | p. 176 |
| Vocabulary and word-formation | p. 178 |
| The PGmc lexicon | p. 178 |
| Loans in Old English | p. 183 |
| Latin | p. 183 |
| Scandinavian | p. 186 |
| Celtic and French | p. 189 |
| Word-formation | p. 190 |
| Typology and productivity | p. 190 |
| Compounding | p. 194 |
| Derivation | p. 198 |
| Names, adverbs and numerals | p. 205 |
| Proper names | p. 205 |
| Adverbs | p. 207 |
| Numerals | p. 208 |
| Topics in OE historical syntax: word-order and case | p. 216 |
| Reconstructed syntax? | p. 216 |
| Basic constituent order | p. 217 |
| The clausal brace and verb-second order | p. 224 |
| The syntax of the OE cases in historical perspective | p. 228 |
| Overview: form, function and syncretism | p. 228 |
| Historical persistence or natural semantics? IE remains in OE case syntax | p. 234 |
| Historical postlude | |
| The dissolution of Old English | p. 243 |
| Stasis, flux, transition | p. 243 |
| Monophthongization and merger | p. 246 |
| The new diphthongs | p. 247 |
| Quantity adjustment | p. 249 |
| Weak vowel collapse and the new morphology | p. 250 |
| Glossary | p. 253 |
| References | p. 272 |
| Index of names | p. 281 |
| Subject index | p. 283 |
| Index of Old English words and affixes | p. 290 |
| Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved. |
