Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The contributors to this volume cover the international range of scholarship in the field of Historical Linguistics, as well as some of its major themes. The work and ideas they discuss are relevant not only to other aspects of Historical Linguistics but also to more general developments in linguistic theory. Along with Professor Jones' Introduction, their comments provide a major overview of Historical Linguistics that will be the reference point for its development for many years to come and form an important contribution to general theories of linguistic behaviour.
Table of Contents
Parameters of syntactic change / John Anderson -- Change and metatheory at the beginning of the 1990s : the primacy of history / Raimo Anttila -- Typology and reconstruction / Bernard Comrie -- On the phonetic basis of phonological change / Patricia Donegan -- Internally and externally motivated change in language contact settings / Nancy C. Dorian -- How real(ist) are reconstructions? / Roger Lass -- Why UG needs a learning theory : triggering verb movement / David Lightfoot -- On the social origins of language change / James Milroy -- The phonetics of sound change / John Ohala -- Nicaraguan English in history / Wayne O'Neil -- Language change as language improvement / Theo Vennemann -- Bidirectional diffusion in sound change / William S-Y Wang and Chinfa Lien.