1. The origins of Old English. The Celtic language puzzle -- 2. The Old English dialects. The rise and fall of West Saxon -- 3. Early lexical diversity. Understanding Danes -- 4. Stylistic variation in Old English. Grammatical transition -- 5. The transition to Middle English. Two Peterborough Chronicles -- 6. A trilingual nation. Lay Subsidy dialects -- 7. Lexical invasions. The first dialect story -- 8. Evolving variation. Well well -- 9. A dialect age. Where did the -s ending come from? -- 10. The emerging standard. Complaining about change -- 11. Printing and its consequences. The first English dictionary -- 12. Early modern English preoccupations. Choosing thou or you -- 13. Linguistic daring. Avoiding transcriptional anaemia -- 14. Dialect fallout. A beggarly portrayal -- 15. Stabilizing disorder. Delusions of simplicity -- 16. Standard rules. Glottal stops -- 17. New horizons. Tracking a change : the case of y'all -- 18. Linguistic life goes on. The grammatical heart of nonstandard English -- 19. And dialect life goes on. Dialect in Middle Earth -- 20. Times a-changin'. Appendix : The location of the towns and counties of England referred to in this book
