Welcome to the weblog of The Codifiers and the English Language!

Our project aims to trace different aspects of the process of linguistic influence: between individuals, within social networks, from grammars and grammarians on other grammars as well as on speakers and writers of English. With the help of the weblog, we hope to establish a community of scholars working in the same field but also beyond, primarily because we would like to share our knowledge with the outside world but also because we would like to profit from knowledge of people interested in our project. We invite you to visit our weblog as often as you wish, to contribute to ongoing discussions, to profit from results we expect to obtain from our research and, frankly, to help us with our research. If you have any suggestions for topics that should be put on this web log, please do not hesitate to email us.

To summarise our aims and intentions with this weblog with a quotation from the preface to the second edition of Priestley’s grammar:

“It is from an amicable union of labours, together with a generous emulation in all the friends of science, that we may most reasonably expect the extension of all kinds of knowledge” (1768:xxiii).