Skip to main content
Return to home
Publisher Logo: Click to return to the browse pagePublisher Logo: Click to return to the browse page
  • Home
  • Projects
Projects

Language Change

by Irmengard RauchGerald F. Carr

The elusive study of language change deals with discernible realia, such as sounds or structured groups of sounds, or words with their intra- and interrelationships. But these empirial data are constantly changing, and even interpreting them may be influenced by new linguistic circumstances. Description of language change has the advantage of hard evidence, but uncovering the reasons behind a set of language data is not a secure task. Language Change investigates the many facets of human activity that bear on this complex field. It relies on the polar areas of phonology, with its immediate alliance to physiology and physics, and semantics, with its penetration into the meaning of the world at large.


Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr have organized teh volume in four sections—Contemporary Change, Historical Change, Linguists on Language Change, and Strata and Language Change—with almost half the chapters offering contemporary data.The distinguished contributors are Barbara Greim, Wayne Harbert, Henry and Renee KahaneI, Ilse Lehist, Winfred P. Lehmann, David Lightfoot, Yakov Malkiel, Raven McDavid Jr., Els Oksaar, Edgar Polome, Irmengard Rauch, and Frans VanCoetsem. Their range of topics reflects the kaleidoscopic essence of language change itself and will be of falue not only to linguists and semioticians but to historians, sociologists, philosophers, and anthropologists as well.

Project Hero Cover

Table of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Contents
  • Preface
  • Part One Contemporary Change
    • The Elliptical Idiom: Change from Icon and Index to Symbol Barbara D. Greim
    • Prosodic Change in Progress: Evidence from Estonian lise Lehiste
    • Evolution of a Semantic Set: Text, Discourse, Narrative Irmengard Rauch
  • Part Two Historical Change
    • The Development of the Germanic Reduplicating Class: Reanalysis and Competition in Morphological Change Frans van Coetsem
    • Germanic Reflexives and the Implementation of Binding Conditions Wayne Harbert
    • On Reconstructing a Proto-Syntax David Lightfoot
  • Part Three Linguists on Language Change
    • History of Language Change as It Affects Syntax Winfred P. Lehmann
    • Low-back Vowels in Providence: A Note in Structural Dialectology Raven I. MoDavid, Jr.
    • Net herlandic Contributions to the Debate on Language Change: From Lambert ten Kate to Josef Vercoullie Edgar C. Polomé
  • Part Four Strata and Language Change
    • Paideia, A Linguistic Subcode Henry and Renée Kahane
    • Alternatives to the Classic Dichotomy Family Tree/Wave Theory? The Romance Evidence Yakov Malkiel
    • Sociocultural Aspects of Language Change Els Oksaar
  • Index

Metadata

  • isbn
    978-0-253-05425-8
  • publisher
    Indiana University Press
  • publisher place
    Bloomington, Indiana USA
  • restrictions
    CC-BY-NC-ND
  • rights
    Copyright © Trustees of Indiana University
  • rights holder
    Indiana University Press
  • rights territory
    World
Press Site
    • Log In
    • Projects
    • Home
    • Email
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • Log In
    • Projects
    • Home
    • Email
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
Copyright © Trustees of Indiana University. All rights reserved
Powered by Manifold