We had the second MMECL: Middle and Modern English Corpus Linguistics in Osaka in 2011. This is one of the two volumes of the proceedings of MMECL 2, both published in the series of Studies in the History of the English Language.

Chaucer’s Language: Cognitive Perspective, which has been edited by Yoshiyuki Nakao and Yoko Iyeiri, includes six papers on Chaucer and cognition written by Japanese Chaucerians and Middle English specialists.

The conference, MMECL: Middle and Modern English Corpus Linguistics, held at the University of Innsbruck in 2009, was an excellent occasion, where we discussed various issues on historical corpora and variation and change of the English language from Middle to Modern English. This volume, edited by the conference organizers, includes selected papers presented at this conference.