Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship
eBook - PDF

Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship

An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics

  1. 575 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship

An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics

About this book

Why does language change? Why can we speak to and understand our parents but have trouble reading Shakespeare? Why is Chaucer's English of the fourteenth century so different from Modern English of the late twentieth century that the two are essentially different languages? Why are Americans and English 'one people divided by a common language'? And how can the language of Chaucer and Modern English - or Modern British and American English - still be called the same language? The present book provides answers to questions like these in a straightforward way, aimed at the non-specialist, with ample illustrations from both familiar and more exotic languages.

Most chapters in this new edition have been reworked, with some difficult passages removed, other passages thoroughly rewritten, and several new sections added, e.g. on the regularity of sound change and its importance for general historical-comparative linguistics. Further, the chapter notes and bibliography have all been updated.

The content is engaging, focusing on topics and issues that spark student interest. Its goals are broadly pedagogical and the level and presentation are appropriate for interested beginners with little or no background in linguistics. The language coverage for examples goes well beyond what is usual for books of this kind, with a considerable amount of data from various languages of India.

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Yes, you can access Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship by Hans Henrich Hock,Brian D. Joseph in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Linguistics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Preface to the Third Edition
  2. Contents
  3. Chapter 1: Introduction
  4. Appendix to Chapter 1: Phonetics, phonetic symbols, and other symbols
  5. Chapter 2: The discovery of Indo-European
  6. Chapter 3: Writing: Its history and its decipherment
  7. Chapter 4: Sound change
  8. Chapter 5: Analogy and change in word structure
  9. Chapter 6: Syntactic change
  10. Chapter 7: Semantic change
  11. Chapter 8: Lexical borrowing
  12. Chapter 9: Lexical change and etymology The study of words
  13. Chapter 10: Language, dialect, and standard
  14. Chapter 11: Dialect geography and dialectology
  15. Chapter 12: Language spread, link languages, and bilingualism
  16. Chapter 13: Convergence: Dialectology beyond language boundaries
  17. Chapter 14: Pidgins, creoles, and related forms of language
  18. Chapter 15: Language death
  19. Chapter 16: Comparative method: Establishing language relationship
  20. Chapter 17: Proto-World? The question of long-distance genetic relationships
  21. Chapter 18: Linguistic palaeontology: Historical linguistics, history, and prehistory
  22. Chapter notes and suggested readings
  23. References