English questions

Can anyone give me an approximate time frame for the following?

(a) when the Great Vowel Shift took place
(b) when the phoneme /x/ disappeared
(c) when /y/ unrounded (derounded? What's the term?) to /i/

I assume (b) must have happened before (a), since e.g. /nixt/ had to have become
/ni:t/ (loss of /x/ + compensatory lengthening) before the GVS in order for
Modern English to have ended up with /najt/.

(And while I'm at it, I know that the slashes / / are supposed to enclose phonetic
representation, not phonemic representation, but I can't remember what you're
supposed to put around the latter, so if anyone could remind me I'd be
grateful.)

Also, does anyone know why Modern English ended up with /x/>/f/ in a few words (e.g.
laugh, enough) rather than /x/ just dropping as it did in most words? Yes, I
know that sentence was ungrammatical, but it's early and I can't figure out how
to say it well. :)

I'd also be grateful for any recommendations for good sources of information
(books, websites, anything) on the historical development of English. I've
studied some Anglo-Saxon, and of course Modern English is my native language,
but I'm really quite clueless about all the inbetween bits.

Thanks,

Thomas

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