Edinburgh Historical Linguistics
Understanding sound change through contemporary theory and historical evidence
- Offers broad linguistic coverage with examples from a wide range of world language families including Germanic, Romance, Mixtec, Tibetan, Hmong, Hebrew, Chinese, Kikuyu, Svan and Menominee
- Explores sound change from structural, historical, sociolinguistic and acquisitional perspectives
- Takes a data led approach with worked examples in each chapter
- Includes questions and suggestions for further study at the end of each chapter
- Download ‘Beyond This Book’ from the Resources tab for extra ideas for seminar preparation or self-study
Drawing examples from a range of world languages, this textbook introduces the ways in which speech sounds become different over time. It explores how we produce and hear particular sounds and how overall word shapes and the pronunciation of individual words change. The roles of phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, traditional formal models and recent exemplar-based work in sound change are all examined. In covering both structural and societal issues, the book integrates different kinds of historical evidence and different theories into a coherent understanding of the full process of sound change.
Illustrates the syntax and morphology of English with manuscript images and word-by-word transcriptions
To describe a language, it is necessary to get as close to the sources as possible -- this textbook takes manuscript images, explains the various scripts used, and provides a word-by-word account of the Old, Middle, and Early Modern English texts. It invites you to explore early English syntax by looking at the linguistic characteristics of well- known texts throughout the early history of English, and encourages you to evaluate how that piece of the language fits in to the broader picture of how English is developing. You will be introduced to the real writing of the period as you look at the original manuscript version of selected excerpts.
For each text, issues such as the word order, the presence of auxiliaries, articles, and pronouns, the types of pronouns, and the nature of complex sentences are explored. With an emphasis on the original manuscripts, this book equips you with the tools to analyse linguistic characteristics of a variety of texts and periods in the early history of English. It is designed for those who have already been introduced to the history of English and who are now going on to look more closely at the syntax and morphology using actual manuscripts.
Key features
- Student edition features numerous colour images
- Examines texts from a variety of genres including poetry, prose, romance and sermon
- Features word by word transcriptions and translations
- Includes a glossary, exercises and suggestions for further reading
- Appendices contain a summary of all grammatical information, background on texts and keys to the exercises
How do learners and speakers make sense of their language and make their language make sense?
Is it dived or dove? Dwarfs or dwarves? If the best students aced the test, did the pretty good students beece it? You've probably often pondered such questions yourself, but did you know that similar questions have inspired some of the most important advances in our understanding not only of how languages change but also of how children acquire grammar and how the human mind works?
This book is designed to help readers make sense of morphological change and, more generally, of the concept of analogy and its role in language and in human cognition. With a critical look at the past 150 years of linguistic work on analogical change, David Fertig brings clarity to a field rife with terminological and theoretical confusion.
Key features
- Explains traditional and modern approaches to analogical change
- Illustrates the relevance of analogy to current linguistic and psycholinguistic theory
- Explores the many ways that covert reanalysis can reshape grammatical systems
