Charting the major developments in the morphology of English， this book introduces students to English inflectional and derivational morphology， presenting them with a long-range perspective of language change。 The book is also built around the chronological periods crucial for each type of important large-scale change in the morphology of English， moving from Old， Middle and Early Modern English， to Modern English。 The book also explores four sources of linguistic innovation - learner errors in categorical inflectional systems， lexical analogy， productivity in derivational systems and language and dialect contact - illustrating the extent to which the history of English Morphology offers significant information about morphological change in general。