English Words: History and Structure

An introduction to the textbook 1. Word origins 2. The background of English 3. Composition of the early modern and modern English vocabulary 4. Smaller than words: morphemes and types of morphemes 5. Allomorphy, phonetics, and affixation 6. Replacement rules 7. Deletion rules and other kinds of allomorphy 8. Fossilized allomorphy: false cognates, and other etymological pitfalls 9. Semantic change and semantic guesswork 10. The pronunciation of classical words in English Appendix I. An introduction to dictionaries Appendix II. Master root list.