"This textbook serves a dual purpose. It is, first, a comprehensive introduction to historical linguistics, intended for both undergraduate and graduate students who have taken, at the least, an introductory course in linguistics. Secondly, unlike many such textbooks, this one is based in the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics, a semantics-based theory which emphasizes the relationship between cognition and language. Descriptions and explanations touch on cognitive, social, and physiological aspects of language as it changes across time. Examples come principally from Germanic (English, German, Yiddish) and Romance (French and Spanish), but with some exploration of aspects of the history of other languages as well. Each chapter concludes with exercises based on material in the chapter and also with suggestions for extensions of the content to wider issues in diachronic linguistics"--.

• Historical Linguistics
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Table of contents
• Preface
• 1. What is language change?
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Characteristics of language
    • 2.1 The human element
    • 2.2 Arbitrariness
    • 2.3 Creativity
    • 2.4 Physicality
  • 3. Change
    • 3.1 Life cycles
    • 3.2 What changes?
  • 4. Evidence of change
  • 5. Cognitive Grammar as a framework
  • 6. Book overview
  • 7. Conclusion
  • Exercises
  • For further investigation
• 2. Studying change
  • 1. Overview
  • 2. Uniformitarianism
  • 3. Coincidence and universals
    • 3.1 Pure coincidence
    • 3.2 Universals
      • 3.2.1 Absolute universals
      • 3.2.2 Relative universals
  • 4. Genetic relationships and families
    • 4.1 The Genealogical (Tree) model
    • 4.2 The wave model
    • 4.3 Contemporary approaches
  • 5. Contact among languages
    • 5.1 Kinds of contact
    • 5.2 Stratal influence
    • 5.3 Areal influence
    • 5.4 Pidgins and creoles
  • 6. Conclusion
  • Exercises
  • For further investigation
• 3. Lexical change
  • 1. Overview
  • 2. Etymology
    • 2.1 Basic vocabulary
    • 2.2 Coinage
    • 2.3 Lexical loss
  • 3. The nature of meaning
  • 4. More general trends
    • 4.1 Generalization (widening)
    • 4.2 Narrowing
    • 4.3 Meliorization
    • 4.4 Pejoration
    • 4.5 Shift
    • 4.6 Metaphor
    • 4.7 Metonymy
  • 5. Wider tendencies and causation
    • 5.1 Root, epistemic, and speech act meaning
  • 6. Conclusion
  • Exercises
  • For further investigation
• 4. Phonetic change
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 The scope of phonetics
  • 2. A note on conventions and features
  • Anchor 228
    • 3.1 Simple changes
    • 3.2 Complex changes: Chain shifts
    • 3.3 Conclusion
  • 4. Conditioned change
    • 4.1 Positional conditioning
    • 4.2 Conditioning by surrounding elements
      • 4.2.1 Segmental influence
        • Anchor 236
        • 4.2.1.2 Dissimilation As might be assumed, given the description of assimilation, dissimilation as a diachronic process indicates that sounds become less (rather than more) alike over time. It is considerably rarer than assimilation in the history of the
        • 4.2.1.3 Metathesis Often cited as a phonetic change, usually third in importance after assimilation and dissimilation, is metathesis. Sounds which are said to metathesize change order in the phonetic string: classical examples include Old English acsian w
      • 4.2.2 Suprasegmental influence
        • 4.2.2.1 Lengthening and diphthongization Under the influence of various non-segmental factors (stress and syllable type), vowels may lengthen over time. It may happen spontaneously in an open syllable also as the result of other changes. In Late Latin, fo
        • 4.2.2.2 Monophthongization and reduction As a counter to lengthening and diphthongization of vowels, are found instances of monophthongization and reduction (which may or may not include a change in the quality of the segment). As one might guess, monopht
  • 5. The wider context
    • 5.1 Imitation and borrowing
    • 5.2 Fortitions and lenitions
  • 6. Consciousness of change
  • 7. Conclusion
  • Exercises
  • For further investigation
• 5. Phonological change
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 Phonetics and phonology
    • 1.2 The phoneme
    • 1.3 Formalism
    • 1.4 Summary
  • 2. Processes of phonemic change
    • 2.1 Merger
    • 2.2 Split
    • 2.2.1 Allophonic split
      • 2.2.2 The creation of phonemes: Phonologization
  • 3. Phonological change as recategorization
    • 3.1 Individual changes
    • 3.2 Phonemic inventories
      • 3.2.1 Patterns
      • 3.2.2 Features
  • 4. Actuation and expansion of use
    • 4.1 Actuation
    • 4.2 Expansion of use
  • 5. Conclusion
  • Exercises
  • For further investigation
• 6. Morphological change
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 Morphology and the morpheme
  • 2. Word-level morphology
    • 2.1 Coinage through affixes
    • 2.2 Reanalysis across boundaries
  • 3. Free and bound morphemes
    • 3.1 Grammaticalization
    • 3.2 New free morphemes from bound
  • 4. Analogical change
    • 4.1 Examples
      • 4.1.1 English plurals
      • 4.1.2 English verbs
    • 4.2 Kuryɬowicz’s paper on analogy
  • 5. Paradigmatic and other systematic change
    • 5.1 Series and semantically related words
    • 5.2 Paradigmatic changes
    • 5.3 A return to Sturtevant’s paradox
  • 6. Concluding comments
  • Exercises
  • For further investigation
• 7. Syntactic change
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 The nature of syntax
    • 1.2 Diachronic syntax
      • 1.2.1 Structural approaches and feasibility
      • 1.2.2 Reconstruction
      • 1.2.3 What to do?
      • 1.2.4 Rate of change
  • 2. Word order
    • 2.1 Simple word order change
    • 2.2 Universals and universal tendencies
    • 2.3 Iconicity
    • 2.4 The analytic-synthetic cycle
  • 3. Reanalysis and grammaticalization
    • 3.1 The Latin and Romance passive
    • 3.2 Complementation and subordinate clauses
  • 4. Conclusions
  • Exercises
  • For further investigation
• 8. Actuation and spread
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Actuation
  • 3. Spread
    • 3.1 Kinds of spread
    • 3.2 The role of variation
      • 3.2.1 Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968)
    • 3.2.2 Social marking
      • 3.2.3 Martha’s Vineyard
      • 3.2.4 Other determiners
  • 4. Lexical diffusion
  • 5. The role of frequency and cognitive salience
  • 6. When can we say that change has emerged from spread?
  • 7. Conclusion
  • Exercises
  • For further investigation
• 9. Methodology
  • 1. Introduction: Theory and method
  • 2. Text-based data
    • 2.1 Philology
      • 2.1.1 Definitions
      • 2.1.2 Challenges
    • 2.2 Corpus data and mining
  • 3. Reconstruction
    • 3.1 Underlying assumptions
      • 3.1.1 Relationships among languages
      • 3.1.2 The ultimate single form
      • 3.1.3 The regularity hypothesis
      • 3.1.4 Occam’s Razor
      • 3.1.5 Hypothesis construction
    • 3.2 Comparative reconstruction
      • 3.2.1 Language family data
      • 3.2.2 Correspondence sets
      • 3.2.3 Testing the reconstruction
      • 3.2.4 Limitations
    • 3.3 Phylogenesis
    • 3.4 Internal reconstruction
      • 3.4.1 Some examples
      • 3.4.2 Limitations
    • 3.5 Syntactic reconstruction
    • 3.6 Combining methods
    • 3.7 Shortcomings and challenges in reconstruction
  • 4. Philology and reconstruction compared and combined
  • 5. Conclusion
  • Exercises
  • For further investigation
• 10. Causation, prediction, and final remarks
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 Generalizations about change and cognition
  • 2. The potential for prediction
    • 2.1 Aspects of change favoring prediction
      • 2.1.1 Drift and typological co-occurrence
      • 2.1.2 Typology, grammaticalization, and cyclical change
    • 2.2 Processes which do not allow prediction
      • 2.2.1 Emergence
      • 2.2.2 Competition
    • 2.3 Factors of change for further exploration
      • 2.3.1 Genetic affiliation
      • 2.3.2 Contact
      • 2.3.3 The role of frequency
    • 2.4 Summary
  • 3. Fundamental causation
    • 3.1 Biological causation
    • 3.2 Social causation
    • 3.3 Cognitive causation
      • 3.3.1 Phonological patterns
      • 3.3.2 Grammatical patterns
      • 3.3.3 Humboldt’s universal
      • 3.3.4 Summary: Cognitive functioning
  • 4. Language as a system
  • Exercises
  • For further investigation
• References
• Index