Influence of Romance Language on English Development

[Hapless Researcher]

I'm currently researching the historical progression of Old English to Contemporary via the scope of Romantic influence.

Does anyone have any good research, or references, for such a topic?

[Daniel]

There's a lot on this. I'd suggest a "history of English" textbook to start then looking up more specific topics.

An interesting perspective, that I don't entirely agree with, is found in McWhorter's (2007) Language Interrupted.
There's also his Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.

[Hapless Researcher]

The second one sounds more interesting, but I'm actually looking for some empirical data that could be sited freely.

Specific trends that possibly show the change in vocabulary after the Langues d'oil infleunce.

Examples being the influence of Old French (fierre influencing the Old English "fif" to "fyr" and eventually the shift to "fire")

[Daniel]

There is certainly data available-- various corpora of Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English. Balancing for genre and register could be tricky though.

First I think you need a more specific question so a general book like that would be a great place to start. Are you interested in just the lexicon? Sociolinguistics factors? Etymologies? Sound changes?

[freknu]

Examples being the influence of Old French (fierre influencing the Old English "fif" to "fyr" and eventually the shift to "fire")

I wasn't aware of any OFr. influence :/

PG. *fōr /fɔːr/ > *fuir /fuir/ > OEn. fȳr /fyːr/ > MEn. fier /fiːr/ > *fier /fair/ > En. fire /faiəɹ/