Michael Adams & Laurel J. Brinton 
Studies in the History of the English Language VI [PDF ebook] 
Evidence and Method in Histories of English

The relationships among data, evidence, and methodology in English historical linguistics are perennially vexed. This volume — which ranges chronologically from Old to Present-Day English and from manuscripts to corpora — challenges a wide variety of assumptions and practices and illustrates how diverse methods and approaches construct evidence for historical linguistic arguments from an increasingly large and diverse body of linguistic data.