
Contents
Cite
Extract
Robert Lowth and his grammar have been of interest to me throughout my academic life. I first became acquainted with the Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) when, for my master's thesis supervised by Noel Osselton, I searched the Topical Glossary of S. A. Leonard's Doctrine of Correctness (1929). Intrigued by the topic ‘Double negatives’, I tried to find the grammar which Leonard had marked with a double asterisk to indicate that it ‘possibly influenced a change in usage’. At the time, the library of the University of Leiden had just acquired R. C. Alston's microfiche series English Linguistics 1500–1800, which, uniquely within English linguistic historiography, allowed for a systematic analysis of a large collection of first editions of eighteenth‐century grammars and other works. Lowth's grammar, however, did not deal with double negation, and this remained a puzzle until I discovered that the library possessed a copy of the grammar's second edition, which did discuss double negation. It was not until the University Library acquired the database Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) that it became possible to study systematically any further changes made by Lowth to later editions and reprints of his grammar, or to analyse the impact of this important and highly authoritative grammar on later grammar writers. Having access to ECCO thus allowed for a similarly revolutionary change in research as Alston's microfiche series: ECCO enables researchers to ask questions of a scope undreamt of before and to find answers of incredible detail and degree of information – not to mention the retrieval speed. The acquisition of ECCO was made possible with the help of my VICI research project ‘The Codifiers and the English Language: Tracing the Norms of Standard English’, which was funded by NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. This project started in July 2005 and it ran until the year of the three hundredth anniversary of Lowth's birth, 2010. The present book is one of the results of the Codifiers project.
Sign in
Personal account
- Sign in with email/username & password
- Get email alerts
- Save searches
- Purchase content
- Activate your purchase/trial code
- Add your ORCID iD
Purchase
Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.
Purchasing informationMonth: | Total Views: |
---|---|
October 2022 | 1 |
October 2023 | 2 |
June 2024 | 2 |
July 2024 | 2 |
Get help with access
Institutional access
Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:
IP based access
Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.
Sign in through your institution
Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.
If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.
Sign in with a library card
Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.
Society Members
Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:
Sign in through society site
Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:
If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.
Sign in using a personal account
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.
Personal account
A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.
Viewing your signed in accounts
Click the account icon in the top right to:
Signed in but can't access content
Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.
Institutional account management
For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.