The Handbook of Historical Linguistics

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics provides a detailed account of the numerous issues, methods, and results that characterize current work in historical linguistics, the area of linguistics most directly concerned with language change as well as past language states.
In its introduction and 25 chapters, written by leading specialists in the field, this volume achieves two main goals. It covers the most important methods of historical linguistics including comparative reconstruction and internal reconstruction, reliable ways of determining language relatedness, and contemporary approaches to dialectological investigation. It also presents sophisticated overviews of the principles that emerge from the in-depth study of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic change, including grammaticalization, and offers wide-ranging explorations of the major factors at work in the causation of change.
The book begins with an extensive and uniquely comprehensive introduction by the editors that places the study of historical linguistics in its proper context both within the field of linguistics itself and within the historical sciences more generally. The well-conceived and lucidly written articles in this volume, supplemented with an extensive bibliography and detailed indexes, make The Handbook of Historical Linguistics an indispensable resource for anyone with an interest in history and/or language.

Brian D. Joseph is Professor of Linguistics and Kenneth E. Naylor Professor of South Slavic Linguistics at The Ohio State University. Within historical linguistics, his research focuses mainly on Indo-European languages. He has written and edited numerous books - including Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship (with Hans H. Hock, 1996) and The Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive (1983) - and has published over 160 articles. He became editor of the journal Language in 2002.
Richard D. Janda is Senior Lecturer and Coordinator for Undergraduate Education in the Department of Linguistics at The Ohio State University. A specialist in both Germanic and Romance linguistics, he has written widely not only on diachronic but also on synchronic issues in phonology, morphology, and morphosyntax, as well as on historical linguistics in general. His more than 70 publications focus on drawing broader implications from the application of theory to specific problems of structure, function, variation, and change in individual languages.

List of Contributors ix Preface xi Part I Introduction 1 On Language, Change, and Language Change - Or, Of History, Linguistics, and Historical Linguistics 3 Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph Part II Methods for Studying Language Change 181 1 The Comparative Method 183 Robert L. Rankin 2 On the Limits of the Comparative Method 213 S. P. Harrison 3 Internal Reconstruction 244 Don Ringe 4 How to Show Languages are Related: Methods for Distant Genetic Relationship 262 Lyle Campbell 5 Diversity and Stability in Language 283 Johanna Nichols Part III Phonological Change 311 6 The Phonological Basis of Sound Change 313 Paul Kiparsky 7 Neogrammarian Sound Change 343 Mark Hale 8 Variationist Approaches to Phonological Change 369 Gregory R. Guy 9 "Phonologization" as the Start of Dephoneticization - Or, On Sound Change and its Aftermath: Of Extension, Generalization, Lexicalization, and Morphologization 401 Richard D. Janda Part IV Morphological and Lexical Change 423 10 Analogy: The Warp and Woof of Cognition 425 Raimo Anttila 11 Analogical Change 441 Hans Henrich Hock 12 Naturalness and Morphological Change 461 Wolfgang U. Dressler 13 Morphologization from Syntax 472 Brian D. Joseph Part V Syntactic Change 493 14 Grammatical Approaches to Syntactic Change 495 David Lightfoot 15 Variationist Approaches to Syntactic Change 509 Susan Pintzuk 16 Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Syntactic Change 529 Alice C. Harris 17 Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change 552 Marianne Mithun Part Vi Pragmatico-semantic Change 573 18 Grammaticalization 575 Bernd Heine 19 Mechanisms of Change in Grammaticization: The Role of Frequency 602 Joan Bybee 20 Constructions in Grammaticalization 624 Elizabeth Closs Traugott 21 An Approach to Semantic Change 648 Benjamin W. Fortson iv Part VII Explaining Linguistic Change 667 22 Phonetics and Historical Phonology 669 John J. Ohala 23 Contact as a Source of Language Change 687 Sarah Grey Thomason 24 Dialectology and Linguistic Diffusion 713 Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes 25 Psycholinguistic Perspectives on Language Change 736 Jean Aitchison Bibliography 744 Subject Index 843 Name Index 856 Language Index 879