- Algeo, John and Carmen Acevedo Butcher. 2014.
- The origins and development of the English language, 7th ed. Based on the original work by Thomas Pyles. Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
- Baron, Dennis. 1981. The epicene pronoun: the word that failed. American Speech 56.2, 83–97.
- Caxton, William. 1490.
- Prologue to the Eneydos. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Caxton, accessed 28 Dec 2018.
- Cowley, David. 2009.
- Modern English Saxoned. https://www.scribd.com/document/270702299/Modern-English-Saxoned
- Crystal, David. 2004.
- The stories of English. Overbrook.
- Eble, Connie. 2004.
- Slang. In Edward Finegan and John S. Rickford, eds., Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century. Cambridge University Press. 375–386.
- Edelstein, Stewart. 2003.
- Dubious doublets. A delightful compendium of unlikely word pairs of common origin, from aardvark/porcelain to zodiac/whiskey. Wiley.
- Hoad, Terry. 2012.
- Preliminaries: Before English. In Lynda Mugglestone, ed. Oxford History of English, updated edition. Oxford University Press. 7–31.
- Mugglestone, Lynda (ed.). 2012.
- Oxford History of English, updated edition. Oxford University Press. In addition to the readings for the class, the entire volume is accessible online through Franklin (the Van Pelt Library catalog).
- Pinker, Steven. 1999.
- Words and rules. Basic Books.
- Pinker, Steven. 2007.
- The stuff of thought. Language as a window into human nature. Viking.
- Pullum, Geoffrey. 1991.
- The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax and other irreverent essays on the study of language. University of Chicago Press.
- Townend, Matthew. 2012.
- Contacts and conflicts: Latin, Norse, and French. In Lynda Mugglestone, ed. Oxford History of English, updated edition. Oxford University Press. 61–85.
- Winter, Jack. 1994.
- How I met my wife. New Yorker, July 25, 1994, Shouts and murmurs. 82.