This volume synthesizes recent approaches to the study of historical English and long-established philological scholarship. Using this synthesis, it casts doubt upon the old antagonisms between modern linguistics and traditional approaches, and makes the historical study of English accessible to scholars and students of both backgrounds.This book brings together 10 studies on various characteristics of the historical development of English, and mainly Old and Middle English, first presented in workshops at the "Old and Middle English" and "Language Variation and Change in Ancient and Medieval Europe" summer schools, organized in Naxos, Greece. It includes studies derived from the first four workshops: "New Approaches to the History of Early English(es)" I, II and III and "Language Change in Indo-European" I. The first part of the volume emphasizes the synchronic description of syntactic, morphological and semantic features of Old English, while the second section emphasizes explanations of the development of various features of English, starting with Old English.