Synopses & Reviews
Applying insights from variationist linguistics to historical change mechanisms that have affected the consonantal system of English, Daniel Schreier reports findings from a historical corpus-based study on the reduction of particular consonant clusters and compares them with similar processes in synchronic varieties, thus defining consonantal change as a phenomenon involving psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, phonological theory and contact linguistics. Moreover, he weighs the impact of external and internal effects on causation, examining data from a total of fifteen varieties with different time depths and social histories.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements * Abbreviations * List of Tables and Figures * Introduction * Consonant Clusters: General Observations * Initial Cluster Reduction in English * Final Cluster Reduction in English * Theoretical Implications * Summary and Conclusion * References * Index