Unlocking the English Language

223 Pages·1991·4.91 MB·

by  Robert Burchfield

UNLOCKING T ilt
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
M A J
P / C ™
' . « L
R O B E R T B U RC H FI E LB
WITH UN INTRODUCTION bT HAROLD bLO O L
Unlocking the English Language

Unlocking the English Language
ROBERT BURCHFIELD
With an introduction by
HAROLD BLOOM
k
HILL AND WANG
A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 1989, 1991 by R. W. Burchfield
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Originally published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited in 1989
First Hill and Wang paperback edition, 1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burchfield, R. W.
Unlocking the English language / Robert Burchfield. — ist
American ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
i. English language. I. Tide.
PE1072.B795 1991 420—dc20 90-43282 CIP
In memory of my parents
Frederick Burchfield (1891-1979) and
Mary Lauder Burchfield (1894-1974)

Contents
List offigures ix
Preface xi
Introduction xiii
Acknowledgements xvii
List of abbreviations xix
Part i: The T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures, 1988
1. Linguistic Milestones 3
2. The Naming of Parts 21
3. The Boundaries of English Grammar 40
4. Words and Meanings in the Twentieth Century 61
Part 11: Eight Essays on English Lexicography and
Grammar
1. The Treatment of Controversial Vocabulary in the Oxford English
Dictionary 83
2. The Turn of the Screw: Ethnic Vocabulary and Dictionaries 109
3. The Point of Severance: British and American English 116
4. The Fowlers: Their Achievements in Lexicography and
Grammar 125
5. The Genealogy of Dictionaries 147
6. The Oxford English Dictionary and Its Historical Principles 166
7. The End of the Alphabet: Last Exit to Grammar 177
8. The OED: Past and Present 188
Index 199

List of figures
1. Jan Svartvik and Randolph Quirk, A Corpus of English
Conversation, C. W. K. Gleerup, Lund, 1980, p. 51. 43
2. Eija Ventola, The Structure of Social Interaction: a Systemic Approach
to the Semiotics of Service Encounters, Francis Pinter, London, 1987,
p. 200. 44