This volume of the Cambridge History of the English Language encompasses three centuries of immense cultural change from Caxton in the late Middle Ages to the American Declaration of Independence and the beginnings of Romanticism. During this period Middle English became Early Modern English and then developed into the early stages of indisputably modern English. This book traces developments in orthography and punctuation phonology and morphology syntax lexis and semantics regional and social variation and the literary language. It also contains a glossary of linguistic terms and an extensive bibliography.