本书旨在尝试以几种不同的观察角度来探讨英语语言的发展轨变。首先，本书的主要章节都以一个大事记列表开始，此表按年代顺序详细给出了在这一阶段发生的与英语语言演变有关的历史事件或社会文化现象；而紧接在年代列表后面的则是“社会历史与政治历史”一节，让读者了解隐于本阶段英语背后决定其演变走向的社会政治环境，为紧接其后关于英语言内部结构变化的讨论做了颇有成效的铺垫。而在各章最后一节“社会语言学特别关注”，则以社会语言学的角度对各章中重要内容进行别开生面的讨论。这种结构安排充分显示出著者为这部英语史所设定的社会语言学基调。此外，作为一部完整的英语史教材，本书还有很多颇具特色的专门为学习者编排的内容。因此，这是一部视角新颖，既有特色又相对完备的英语言史优秀教材。

List of Maps and Figures
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
1.1 The Time Periods of English
1.2 Language Change
1.3 Sources of Information on Language Change
1.4 Linguistic Preliminaries
1.5 The Sounds of English,and Symbols Used to Describe Them
1.6 Structure of the Book
2 The Pre-history of English
2.1 The Indo-European Langages and Linguistic Relatedness
2.2 Linguistic Developments:The Indo-European Language Family
2.3 From Indo-European to Germanic
2.4 Typological Classification
2.5 Sociolinguistic Focus,The Indo-European Tribes and the Spread of
Language,Languag Contact and Language Change.
2.6 Conclusion
3 Old English
3.1 Social and Political History
3.2 Linguistic Deveopments:The Sounds,Structure and Typology of Old English
3.3 Linguistic and Literary Achievements
3.4 The Dialects of Old English
3.5 Sociolinguistic Focus
4 Middle English
4.1 Social and Political History
4.2 Linguistic Developments:Middle English Sounds and Structure,with Particular
Emphasis on the Breakdown of the Inflectional System and its Linguistic
Typological Implication
4.3 Middle English Dialects
4.4 Sociolinguistic Focus:Social Stratification,Multilingualism and Dialect
Variation,Language Contact:The Myth of Middle English Creolization
4.5 Conclusion
5 Early Modern English
6 Present-Day English
7 English in the United States
8 World-Wide English
Bibliograpby
Index