'Larry Trask's introduction to historical linguisties is what I've been wanting for many years: an introductory undergraduate textbook which presents the latest developments in historical research in a clear, exciting, and straightforward way.
【目录】
1. The fact of language change 1.1 Boris Becker's observation 1.2 English then and now 1.3 Attitudes to language change 1.4 The inevitability of change 2. Lexical and semantic change 2.1 Borrowing 2.2 Phonological treatment of loans 2.3 Morphological treatment of loans 2.4 Formation of new words 2.5 Change in word-meaning 3. Phonological change Ⅰ: Change in pronunciation 3.1 The phonetic basis of phonological change 3.2 Assimilation and dissimilation 3.3 Lenition and fortition 3.4 Additional and removal of phonetic features 3.5 Vowels and syllable structure 3.6 Whole-segment process 3.7 The regularity issue: a first look 3.8 Summary 4. Phonological change Ⅱ: Change in phonological systems 4.1 Conditioning and rephonologization 4.2 Phonological space 4.3 Chain shifts 4.4 Phonological change as rule change 4.5 Summary 5. Morphological change 5.1 Reanalysis 5.2 Analogy and levelling 5.3 Universal principles of analogy 5.4 Morphologization 5.5 Morphologization of phonological rules 5.6 Change in morphological type 6. Syntactic change 6.1 Reanalysis of surface structure 6.2 Shift of markedness 6.3 Grammaticalization 6.4 Typological harrmony 6.5 Case study: the rise of ergativity 6.6 Syntactic change as restructuring of grammars 7. Relatedness between languages 7.1 The origin of dialects 7.2 Dialect geography 7.3 Genetic Relationships 7.4 Tree model and wave model 7.5 The language families of the world 8. The comparative method 8.1 Systematic correspondences 8.2 Comparative reconstruction 8.3 Pitfalls and limitations 8.4 The Neogrammarian Hypothesis 8.5 Semantic reconstruction 8.6 The use of typology and universals 8.7 Reconstructing grammar 8.8 The reality of proto-languages 9. Internal reconstruction 9.1 A first look at the internal method 9.2 Alternations and internal reconstruction 9.3 Case study: the laryngeal theory of PIE 9.4 Internal reconstruction of grammar and lexicon 10. The origin and propagation of change 10.1 The Saussurean paradox 10.2 Variation and social stratification 10.3 Variation as the vehicle of change 10.4 Lexical diffusion 10.5 Near-merger 10.6 A closing note 11. Contact and the birth and death of language 11.1 Language contact 11.2 Linguistic areas 11.3 Language birth: pidgins and creoles 11.4 Language death 11.5 Language planning 12. Language and prehistory 12.1 Etymology 12.2 Place names 12.3 Linguistic paleontology 12.4 Links with archaeology 12.5 Statistical methods 13. Very remote relations 13.1 The mainstream view 13.2 A brief history of remote proposal 13.3 The Nostratic hypothesis 13.4 Greenberg’s multilateral comparisons 13.5 Towards an evaluation of macro-families 13.6 Towards Proto-World? 13.7 The early spread of people and languages 13.8 Worldwide loan word?
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