Previous ed.: 1997.

Includes appendices, glossary, references and indexes.

1. Modelling English

PART 1: THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH

2. The origins of English

3. Old English
Early borrowings -- Runes -- The Old English corpus -- Literary texts -- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle -- Spelling -- Sounds -- Grammar -- Vocabulary -- Late borrowings -- Dialects

4. Middle English
French and English
The transition from Old English
The Middle English corpus
Literary texts
Chaucer
Spelling
Sounds
Grammar
Vocabulary
Latin borrowings
Dialects
Middle Scots
The origins of Standard English

5. Early Modern English
Caxton
Transitional Texts
Renaissance English
The inkhorn controversy
Shakespeare
The King James Bible
Spelling and regularization
Punctuation
Sounds
Grammar
Vocabulary
The Academy debate
Johnson

6. Modern English
Transition
Grammatical trends
Prescriptivism
American English
Breaking the rules
Variety awareness
Scientific language
Literary voices
Dickens
Recent trends

7. World English
The New World
American dialects
Canada
Black English Vernacular
Australia
New Zealand
South Africa
South Asia
West Africa
East Africa
South-East Asia and the South Pacific
A world language
Numbers of speakers
Standard English
The future of English
English threatened and as threat

Part II : ENGLISH VOCABULARY

8. The nature of the lexicon
Lexemes
The size of the English lexicon
Abbreviations
Proper names
The size of a person's lexicon

9. The sources of the lexicon
Native vocabulary
Foreign borrowings
Word-formation
Unusual structures
Lexical creation
Literary neologism

10. Etymology
Lexical history
Semantic change
Folk etymology
Place names
Surnames
First names
Nicknames
Nicknames
Object names
Eponyms

11. The structure of the lexicon
Semantic structure
Semantic fields
Dictionary and thesaurus
Collocations
Lexical predictability
Idioms
Synonyms
Antonyms
Hyponyms
Incompatibility
Other sense relations

12. Lexical dimensions
Loaded vocabulary
Taboo
Swearing
Jargon
Doublespeak
Political correctness
Catch phrases
Vogue words
Slogans
Graffiti
Slang
Quotations
Proverbs
Archaisms
Clichés Last words

Part III : ENGLISH GRAMMAR

13. Grammatical mythology
The nature of grammar
Knowing vs knowing about
Traditional grammar
Prescriptive grammar
The 20th-century legacy
The main branches of grammar

14. The structure of words
Morphology
Suffixation
Adjectives
Nouns
The apostrophe
Pronouns
Verbs

15. Word classes
Parts of speech
Traditional definitions
New classes
Nouns
Pronouns
Adjectives
Adverbs
Verbs
Prepositions
Conjunctions
Interjections

16. The structure of sentences
Spoken and written syntax
Types of sentence
Sentence structure
Sentence functions
Clause elements and types
Phrases
Noun phrases
Verb phrases
Multiple sentences
Abbreviations
Disjuncts and comment clauses
Reporting speech
Sentence information
Beyond the sentence

Part IV : SPOKEN AND WRITTEN ENGLISH

17. The sound system
Phonetics and phonology
Vocal organs
Vowels
Consonants
Syllables
Connected speech
Prosody
Sound symbolism
Pronunciation in practice

18. The writing system
Graphetics and graphology
Typography
The alphabet
Properties of letters
Letter frequency
Letter distribution
Letter symbolism
Analysing handwriting
Grapethic variety
Spelling
Sources of irregularity
Spelling reform
Punctuation
The development of the writing system

Part V: USING ENGLISH

19. Varieties of discourse
Structure vs. use
Pragmatic issues
The nature of discourse
Microlinguistic studies
Texts and varieties
Speech vs. writing
Mixed medium
Monologue and dialogue

20. Regional variation
Accent and dialect -- International and intranational -- Prescriptive attitudes -- Gender -- Occupation -- Religion -- Science -- Law -- Journalism -- Broadcasting -- Weather forecasting -- Sports commentary -- Advertising -- Restricted varieties -- New fashions -- New technologies

22. Personal variation
Individual differences -- Deviance -- Word games -- Rule-breaking varieties -- The edges of language -- Jokes and puns -- Comic alphabets -- Variety humour -- Literary freedom -- Phonetics and phonology -- Graphetics and graphology -- Grammar and lexicon -- Discourse and variety -- Stylometry

23. Electronic variation
Netspeak and its properties -- Lexical distinctivness -- Graphetic distinctivness -- Graphological distinctivness -- Grammatical distinctivness -- Discourse distinctivness

Part VI: LEARNING ABOUT ENGLISH

24. Learning English as a mother tongue
Child language acquisition -- Literacy -- Grammatical development -- Early words and sounds -- Reading and writing -- Insufficient language -- Language disability

25. New ways of studying English
Technological revolution -- Corpus studies -- National and international corpora -- Dictionaries -- Innovations -- Sources and resources

Appendices:
I Glossary
II Special symbols and abbreviations
III References
IV Further reading
V Index of linguistic items
VI Index of authors and personalities VII Index of topics

"The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language is one of the publishing phenomena of recent times. Rarely has a book so packed with accurate and well researched factual information been so widely read and popularly acclaimed. It has played a key role in the spread of general interest in language matters, generating further publications and broadcasting events for an avid audience. Its First Edition appeared in hardback in 1995 and a revised paperback in 1997. There have been numerous subsequent updated reprintings: but this Second Edition now presents an overhaul of the subject for a new generation of language-lovers and of teachers, students and professional English-users concerned with their own linguistic legacy. The book offers a unique experience of the English language, exploring its past, present and future. David Crystal systematically explains the history, structure, variety and range of uses of English worldwide, employing a rich apparatus of text, pictures, tables, maps and graphics. The length of the Second Edition has increased by 16 pages and there are 44 new illustrations, a new chapter, extensive new material on world English and Internet English, and a complete updating of statistics, further reading suggestions and other references throughout the book." (Book Cover)