Motives for Language Change

This book considers the processes involved in language change and how they can be modelled and studied.

Raymond Hickey (Edited by)

9780521793032, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 January 2003

300 pages
23.6 x 16.1 x 2.4 cm, 0.616 kg

Review of the hardback: ' … the papers are of uniformly high quality, and some of them are absolutely first-rate. A number of the contributions are also eminently suitable for use in advanced courses on historical linguistics. This book is a worthy tribute to a distinguished scholar.' CJL/RCL

This specially commissioned volume considers the processes involved in language change and the issues of how they can be modelled and studied. The way languages change offers an insight into the nature of language itself, its internal organisation, and how it is acquired and used. Accordingly, the phenomenon of language change has been approached from a variety of perspectives by linguists of many different orientations. This book, originally published in 2003, brings together an international team of leading figures from different areas of linguistics to re-examine some of the central issues in this field and also to discuss new proposals. The volume is arranged into sections, including grammaticalisation, the typological perspective, the social context of language change and contact-based explanations. It seeks to cover the subject as a whole, bearing in mind its relevance for the general analysis of language, and will appeal to a broad international readership.

Introduction Raymond Hickey
Part I. The Phenomenon of Language Change: 1. On change in 'E-language' Peter Matthews
2. Formal and functional motivation for language change Frederick J. Newmeyer
Part II. Linguistic Models and Language Change: 3. Metaphors, models and language change Jean Aitchison
4. Log(ist)ic and simplistic S-curves David Denison
5. Regular suppletion Richard Hogg
6. On not explaining language change: optimality theory and the Great Vowel Shift April McMahon
Part III. Grammaticalization: 7. Grammaticalization: cause or effect? David Lightfoot
8. From subjectification to intersubjectification Elizabeth Traugott
Part IV. The Social Context for Language Change: 9. On the role of the speaker in language change James Milroy
Part V. Contact-based Explanations: 10. The quest for the most 'parsimonious' explanations: endogeny vs. contact revisited Markku Filppula
11. Diagnosing prehistoric language contact Malcolm Ross
12. The ingenerate motivation of sound change Gregory K. Iverson and Joseph C. Salmons
13. How do dialects get the features they have? On the process of new dialect formation Raymond Hickey
Part VI. The Typological Perspective: 14. Reconstruction, typology, and reality Bernard Comrie
15. Reanalysis and typological change Raymond Hickey.

Subject Areas: Sociolinguistics [CFB]