The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.

• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Contributor addresses
• Introduction: Boundaries and boundarycrossings in the history of English
• Section 1: Conceptual and methodological boundaries
• 1. Scale and mode in histories of English
• 2. The blurred boundaries of genres-in-use: Principles and implications from rhetorical genre studies for English historical linguistics
• 3. Meanderings from early English to World Englishes: A Complex Systems perspective on morphosyntactic changes in wh-pronouns
• Section 2: Linguistic boundaries
• 4. First or best, last not least: Domain edges in the history of English
• 5. Expanding boundaries of a function word: Uses of one in Early Modern and Modern English
• 6. Non-correlative commas between subjects and verbs in Early and Late Modern English sermons and scientific texts
• 7. Old English verbs of envy: Class membership and grammatical behaviour
• Section 3: Language and language variety boundaries
• 8. Germanic /r/ as an isogloss, rhotacism, and the West Germanic gemination
• 9. Migration, localities, and discourse: Shifting linguistic boundaries in Swedish-American cookbooks
• 10. Specimen texts and boundaries in the history of the English language
• Coda: HEL-bound
• Index