Research

Historical English Language & Linguistics

This cluster researches every period of the language and connects philological and linguistic traditions; much of its work is data-led.

Staff

Publications

2025

Lowe, K. (2025) Old English Charters.

Hough, C. (2025) A digital approach to place-name survey in Scotland. Onomastica Uralica, 20, pp. 297-312.

Lowe, K. A. (2025) Printing Anglo-Saxon from Parker to Hickes and Wanley. With a Catalogue of Early Printed Books Containing Anglo-Saxon 1566–1705. By Peter J. Lucas. Library of the Written Word, 84. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 708. Journal of English and Germanic Philology,

Kopaczyk-McPherson, J., Jucker, A. H. (2025) Communities of practice in the history of English. Cambridge University Press

Hough, C. (2025) Berwickshire and beyond: Old English in Borders place-names. Scottish Place-Name Society Newsletter, 59, pp. 11-13.

Wiggins, A., Londe Silva, A. P. (2025) The Visible Hand: Identifying Adam Smith's Handwriting.

Smith, C., Nohara, S., Londe Silva, A. P., Steeds, L., Stewart, D., Wiggins, A. (2025) Adam Smith’s Library.

Hough, C. (2025) From Oxford to Gatwick via Swindon: animals in English place-names. Liverpool University Press

Taylor, S., Williamson, E., Hough, C. (2025) The Place-Names of Berwickshire. Volume One. The Border Parishes. Shaun Tyas

Wiggins, A. (2025) Talbot, Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, “Bess of Hardwick” Palgrave Macmillan

Wiggins, A. (2025) Digital materiality and early modern archives. British Academy

Anderson, W., Hough, C. (2025) Metaphors of the visual arts. Edizioni dell’Orso

Kopaczyk, J. (2025) The history of Scots. Cambridge University Press

Kopaczyk-McPherson, J. (2025) Third-wave historical sociolinguistics and communities of practice. Wiley

2024

Hough, C. (2024) Name spellings and identity in Britain: Changes through time. Reichert Verlag

Lowe, K. (2024) Joseph Grossi, Angles on a Kingdom: East Anglian Identities from Bede to Ælfric. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. Pp. 385; $85. ISBN: 978-1-4875-0573-8. Speculum, 99, pp. 909-911. (doi: 10.1086/730957)

Dallachy, F. (2024) A human-scale set of categories for the Historical Thesaurus of English. Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, 45, pp. 145-168. (doi: 10.1353/dic.2024.a932064)

Wiggins, A., Scott, J. (2024) Manuscript and women’s letters. Palgrave Macmillan

Scott, J., Wiggins, A. (2024) The afterlives of Mary’s letters. Edinburgh University Press

Hough, C. (2024) The place-name Cockley Cley in Norfolk. Notes and Queries, 71, pp. 10-11. (doi: 10.1093/notesj/gjae015)

Kopaczyk, J. (2024) Unpacking and capturing multilingual practices and their effects in medieval administrative and legal discourse. Edizioni dell'Orso

2023

Hough, C. (2023) Metonymy in settlement-names. Jagiellonian University Press

(2023) Archives: Power, Truth, and Fiction.

Wiggins, A., Prescott, A. (2023) Introduction. Oxford University Press

Wiggins, A. (2023) The materiality of written textual forms. Oxford University Press

Hough, C., Dance, R., Durkin, P., Pagan, H. (2023) Contact-induced lexical effects in Medieval English. Palgrave Macmillan

Putter, A., Kopaczyk, J., Bridges, V. (2023) Textual and codicological manifestations of multilingual culture in medieval England. Palgrave Macmillan

Zeldenrust, L. (2023) The greatest story ever sold? Marketing Melusine across early modern Western, Northern, and Central Europe. De Gruyter

Hough, C. (2023) The languages of Berwickshire place-names. Scottish Place-Name Society Newsletter, 55, pp. 3-5.

Zeldenrust, L. (2023) Commentary article on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Bloomsbury Medieval Studies, pp. 13 Apr. (doi: 10.5040/9781350895683.010)

Wiggins, A. (2023) Paper and elite ephemerality. Routledge

Anderson, W. (2023) A smile which melted her heart: exploring metaphors in English corpora. Routledge

Kopaczyk, J. (2023) The challenges of bringing together multilingualism and multimodality: unpacking the structural model of multilingual practice. Routledge

2022

Zeldenrust, L., Lodén, S. (2022) Valentin and his wild brother in European literature: how French is a medieval French romance? Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures, 9, pp. 144-179. (doi: 10.54103/interfaces-09-08)

Alexander, M., Dallachy, F., Struan, A. (2022) Writing with the Historical Thesaurus of English.

Lowe, K. A. (2022) The Chronology and Canon of Ælfric of Eynsham by Aaron J. Kleist. Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 121, pp. 251-253.

Hough, C. (2022) Old Northumbrian in the Scottish Borders: evidence from place-names. John Benjamins Publishing Company

2021

Lowe, K. A. (2021) Forging ahead. History Today, 71,

Hough, C. (2021) Personal Names and Naming Practices in Medieval Scotland, ed. Matthew Hammond. English Historical Review, 136, pp. 706-708. (doi: 10.1093/ehr/ceab089)

Molineaux, B., Kopaczyk, J., Alcorn, R., Maguire, W., Karaiskos, V., Los, B. (2021) Phonotactics, graphotactics and contrast: the history of Scots dental fricative spellings. English Language and Linguistics, 25, pp. 91-119. (doi: 10.1017/S1360674319000479)

Hough, C. (2021) Guy Puzey, Laura Kostanski (eds.): Names, places, perceptions and power. Nomina: Journal of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland, 40, pp. 153-158.

Hough, C. (2021) Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, Peter McClure (eds.): The Oxford dictionary of family names in Britain and Ireland. Nomina: Journal of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland, 40, pp. 145-151.

Hough, C. (2021) Place-names, languages and identity on the Anglo-Scottish border. Nomina: Journal of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland, 40, pp. 75-97.

Dambrogio, J., Starza Smith, D., Pellecchia, J., Wiggins, A., Clarke, A., Bryson, A. (2021) The spiral-locked letters of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. Electronic British Library Journal, 2021, (doi: 10.23636/gyhc-b427)

2020

Molineaux, B., Maguire, W., Karaiskos, V., Alcorn, R., Kopaczyk, J., Los, B. (2020) Visualising pre-standard spelling practice: understanding the interchange of and in Older Scots. Journal of Data Mining and Digital Humanities, 2020, pp. 1-11.

Lowe, K. A. (2020) From memorandum to written record: function and formality in Old English non-literary texts. Brill

Włodarczyk, M., Kopaczyk, J., Kozak, M. (2020) Multilingualism in Greater Poland court records (1386-1448): tagging discourse boundaries and code-switching. Corpora, 15, pp. 273-290. (doi: 10.3366/cor.2020.0200)

Hough, C. (2020) Review of 'Sunnyside: A Sociolinguistic History of British House Names' by Laura Wright (Oxford: Published for The British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2020). History Today, 70, pp. 101-101.

Kopaczyk, J., Millar, R. M. (2020) Introduction. Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster

(2020) Language on the Move Across Domains and Communities. Selected Papers From the 12th Triennial Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster, Glasgow 2018.

Kopaczyk, J. (2020) The language of medieval legal record as a complex multilingual code. Routledge

Hough, C. (2020) The migration of Old English to Scotland: place-name evidence for early Northumbrian settlement in Berwickshire. Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster

Kopaczyk, J. (2020) Textual standardisation of legal Scots vis a vis Latin. De Gruyter Mouton

Anderson, W., Semino, E. (2020) Metaphor. Routledge

Alexander, M., Dallachy, F. (2020) Lexis. Routledge

Hough, C. (2020) Place-name evidence for the etymology of Scots Carse. Notes and Queries, 67, pp. 31-32. (doi: 10.1093/notesj/gjz162)

Hough, C. (2020) The etymology of pot 'deep hole, pit' Notes and Queries, 67, pp. 27-31. (doi: 10.1093/notesj/gjz163)

Zeldenrust, L. (2020) The Mélusine Romance in Medieval Europe: Translation, Circulation, and Material Contexts. Boydell and Brewer

Zeldenrust, L. (2020) Medieval Romances across European Borders, ed. Miriam Edlich-Muth (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). vii + 228 pp. ISBN: 978-2-503-57716-6. €75.00. Medium Aevum, 89, pp. 197-198.

Anderson, W. (2020) Metaphor in the digital age: Opening the flood-gates. Token: A Journal of English Linguistics, 10, pp. 15-38. (doi: 10.25951/4356)

Hough, C. (2020) The Berwickshire place-name resource. Scottish Archives, 25/26, pp. 56-72.

Kay, C., Alexander, M., Dallachy, F., Roberts, J., Samuels, M., Wotherspoon, I. (2020) The Historical Thesaurus of English, second edition.

Kopaczyk, J. (2020) Unstable content, remediated layout: urban laws in Scotland through manuscript and print. De Gruyter Mouton

2019

Lowe, K. A. (2019) Creating and curating an archive: Bury St Edmunds and its Anglo-Saxon past. Cambridge University Press

Hough, C. (2019) Old English Philology: Studies in Honour of R. D. Fulk by Leonard Neidorf, Rafael J. Pascual, Tom Shippey. Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 118, pp. 580-583.

Hough, C. (2019) What’s in a place name? Historic Scotland, 2019, pp. 32-36.

Maguire, W., Alcorn, R., Molineaux, B., Kopaczyk, J., Karaiskos, V., Los, B. (2019) Charting the rise and demise of a phonotactically motivated change in Scots. Folia Linguistica Historica, 53, pp. 37-59. (doi: 10.1515/flih-2019-0003)

Hough, C. (2019) Review of Jill Bourne, The Place-name Kingston and Royal Power in Middle Anglo-Saxon England: Patterns, Possibilities and Purpose, BAR British Series 630 (Oxford: BAR Publishing 2017) Nomina: Journal of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland, 39, pp. 119-123.

Anderson, W. (2019) Perception metaphor in English: a bird's-eye view. John Benjamins Publishing Company

Wiggins, A. (2019) Bess of Hardwick's Letters: Language, Materiality and Early Modern Epistolary Culture [paperback edition] Routledge

Wiggins, A. (2019) Money, marriage and remembrance: telling stories from the Cavendish Financial Accounts. Manchester University Press

Hough, C. (2019) An online resource for Berwickshire place-names. Scottish Place-Name News, 46, pp. 6-8.

Włodarczyk, M., Kopaczyk, J., Adamczyk, E., Makarova, O., Berger, Ł. (2019) Electronic Repository of Greater Poland Oaths (1386-1448)

Zeldenrust, L. (2019) Mélusine voyage, les traductions de romans. Silvana Editoriale

Kopaczyk, J., Krygier, M. (2019) Periodization: an evolving discipline, an evolving curriculum. The Modern Language Association of America

2018

Hough, C. (2018) Place-name evidence for Old English dialects. Onomastica Uralica, 11, pp. 159-168.

Aitken, B., Hough, C., Taylor, S., Williamson, E. (2018) The Berwickshire Place-Name Resource.

Molineaux, B., Kopaczyk, J., Alcorn, R., Maguire, W., Karaiskos, V., Los, B. (2018) Early spelling evidence for Scots L-vocalisation: A corpus-based approach. Edinburgh University Press

(2018) Historical Dialectology in the Digital Age.

Alcorn, R., Kopaczyk, J., Los, B., Molineaux, B. (2018) Historical dialectology and the Angus McIntosh legacy. Edinburgh University Press

Hough, C. (2018) Wrangham: a place-name in the wrang place. Scottish Place-Name News, 45, pp. 7-9.

Kopaczyk, J., Molineaux Ress, B., Karaiskos, V., Alcorn, R., Los, B., Maguire, W. (2018) Towards a grapho-phonologically parsed corpus of medieval Scots: Database design and technical solutions. Corpora, 13, pp. 255-269. (doi: 10.3366/cor.2018.0146)

Hough, C. (2018) Biblical analogues for early Anglo-Saxon law. Brill

Zeldenrust, L. (2018) Space, Gender, and Memory in Middle English Romance: Architectures of Wonder in ‘Melusine’. By Jan Shaw. (The New Middle Ages) New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. vii+272 pp. £66.99; $99.99. ISBN 978–1–137–45650–2. Modern Language Review, 113, pp. 368-370. (doi: 10.5699/modelangrevi.113.2.0368)

(2018) Applications of Pattern-Driven Methods in Corpus Linguistics.

Hough, C. (2018) Translating Old English law. Voices of Law: Language, Text and Practice

Kopaczyk, J., Tyrkkö, J. (2018) Blogging around the world. John Benjamins Publishing Company

Tyrkkö, J., Kopaczyk, J. (2018) Present applications and future directions in pattern-driven approaches to corpus linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing Company

Lowe, K. A. (2018) Worcester and Wales: Copies of the Regula pastoralis in the early Middle Ages. Leiden University Press

Hough, C. (2018) Misleading personal names in Berwickshire place-names. Institutet für språk och folkminnen och Ortnamnssällskapet

Zeldenrust, L. (2018) Helen J. Swift, Representing the Dead: Epitaph Fictions in Late-Medieval France, Gallica 40 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016). xiv + 334 pp.; 5 colour plates, 21 black-and-white illustrations. ISBN 978-1-84384-436-5. Medium Aevum, 87, pp. 182-183.

Wiggins, A. (2018) The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist XXII: Manuscripts in Christ’s, Emmanuel, Jesus, Selwyn and Sidney Sussex Colleges, Peterhouse and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, ed. Angela M. Lucas. Cambridge: Brewer, 2016. The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist XXIII: The Rawlinson Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford, ed. S.J. Ogilvie-Thomson. Cambridge: Brewer, 2017. Archives, 53, pp. 75-86. (doi: 10.3828/archives.2018.6)

2017

Kopaczyk, J. (2017) Administrative multilingualism on the page in early modern Poland: In search of a framework for written code-switching. De Gruyter

Piao, S., Dallachy, F., Baron, A., Demmen, J., Wattam, S., Durkin, P., McCracken, J., Rayson, P., Alexander, M. (2017) A time-sensitive historical thesaurus-based semantic tagger for deep semantic annotation. Computer Speech and Language, 46, pp. 113 - 135. (doi: 10.1016/j.csl.2017.04.010)

Hough, C. (2017) Recovering the Earliest English Language in Scotland (REELS) Scottish Place-Name News, 43, pp. 2-3.

Lowe, K. (2017) Early textual resources. De Gruyter Mouton

Hough, C. (2017) Onomastics. Mouton de Gruyter

Kopaczyk, J. (2017) Terms and conditions: A comparative study of noun binomials in UK and Scottish legislation. Routledge

Fitzmaurice, S., Robinson, J., Hine, I., Dallachy, F., Rogers, K., Alexander, M., Pidd, M., Mehl, S., Groves, M., Aitken, B. (2017) The Seven Words of the Virgin: Identifying Change in the Discourse Context of the Concept of Virginity in Early Modern English.

(2017) Binomials in the History of English: Fixed and Flexible.

Kopaczyk, J., Sauer, H. (2017) Defining and exploring binomials. Cambridge University Press

Wiggins, A. (2017) Digital XML-based editing: the case of Bess of Hardwick's letters. Routledge

Hough, C. (2017) Silverdale in Lancashire: the place-name and the hoard. Notes and Queries, 64, pp. 223-227. (doi: 10.1093/notesj/gjx031)

Hough, C. (2017) Place-names and the history of Scots. History Scotland, 17, pp. 38-39.

Vanhoutte, E., Anderson, W., Galina, I., Gooding, P. (2017) Digital Humanities 2015: Global Digital Humanities [Guest Editors] Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 32,

Anderson, W., Corbett, J. (2017) Exploring English with Online Corpora: An Introduction [2nd ed.] Palgrave Macmillan

Hough, C. (2017) Learning with the Online Thesaurus of Old English (TOE), revised and updated version.

Hough, C. (2017) A new perspective on Old English metaphor. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Wiggins, A. (2017) Bess of Hardwick's Letters: Language, Materiality and Early Modern Epistolary Culture [hardback edition] Routledge

Biggam, C., Hough, C., Izdebska, D. (2017) Daily life in Anglo-Saxon England. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Jucker, A. H., Kopaczyk, J. (2017) Historical (im)politeness. Palgrave Macmillan

Fitzmaurice, S. M., Robinson, J., Alexander, M., Hine, I., Mehl, S., Dallachy, F. (2017) Linguistic DNA: investigating conceptual change in early modern English discourse. Studia Neophilologica, 89, pp. 21-38. (doi: 10.1080/00393274.2017.1333891)

Anderson, W. (2017) Metaphor Across Time and Conceptual Space by James J. Mischler III. Metaphor and Symbol, 32, pp. 55-56. (doi: 10.1080/10926488.2017.1272921)

Anderson, W. (2017) Metaphor and diachronic variation. Routledge

Fitzmaurice, S., Robinson, J. A., Alexander, M., Hine, I. C., Mehl, S., Dallachy, F. (2017) Reading into the past. John Benjamins

Los, B., Kopaczyk, J. (2017) Referential functions of there+P pronominal adverbs in Older Scots. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego

Alexander, M., Dallachy, F., Rayson, P. (2017) SAMUELS Semantically-Annotated Corpora.

Alexander, M., Davies, M., Dallachy, F. (2017) Semantic EEBO.

(2017) The Daily Lives of the Anglo-Saxons.

Zeldenrust, L. (2017) The Lady with the Serpent’s Tail: Hybridity and the Dutch Meluzine. Brill

Alcorn, R., Molineaux, B., Kopaczyk, J., Karaiskos, V., Los, B., Maguire, W. (2017) The emergence of Scots: Clues from Germanic *a reflexes. Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ireland

Zeldenrust, L. (2017) The fragments of a Middle English Melusyne edition: some further clues. Journal of the Early Book Society, 20, pp. 251-264.

Postgraduate research students

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Glasgow has a long-established international reputation for the historical study of English, with colleagues undertaking research relating to every period of the language, from pre-/Old English to the recent past.  Glasgow’s approach to the history of English links the best of the philological and linguistic traditions, and much of its research is data-led.  There are cross-School and cross-College synergies with colleagues working on Scots and English in Scotland, especially through the Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies, and on Modern English Language, most notably on language variation and change.

We have distinctive strengths in such subjects as corpus-studies, Old Norse, the interface with medieval and renaissance studies, and historical pragmatics, and the School is a centre of excellence for the study of historical lexicology and semantics: the Historical Thesaurus of English was developed at Glasgow, and several successor-projects are now under way engaging with ‘big data’ issues, notably the AHRC-funded Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus, SAMUELS, and Linguistic DNA projects. 

Such work aligns closely with Glasgow Digital Humanities, our cross-disciplinary network.  Onomastics (name-studies) is a particular strength within the School and across the College, with a lively reading-group (Onomasticon) and a strong cohort of postgraduates.  We cooperate closely in research with several overseas universities on historical projects, notably the University of Stavanger, Norway (on the Middle English Grammar Project).