Historical linguistics
by Lyle Campbell · first published 1998
2mentions
1recommended by
2HN commenters
2021–2022first – last mentioned
50% recommend50% neutral
This accessible, hands-on text not only introduces students to the important topics in historical linguistics but also shows them how to apply the methods described and how to think about the issues; abundant examples and exercises allow students to focus on how to do historical linguistics. Distinctive to this text is its integration of the standard topics with others now considered important to the field, including syntactic change, grammaticalization, sociolinguistic contributions to linguistic change, distant genetic relationships, areal linguistics, and linguistic prehistory. Examples are
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I'd also recommend Lyle Campbell's Historical Linguistics: An Introduction for historical linguistics especially. It's a very concise introduction and I believe you could understand most of it without a deep background in linguistics (maybe some understanding…
on “Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia (2013)” ↗For anyone wondering about the field that studies this sort of phenomenon, welcome to the wonderful field of historical linguistics! Historical linguistics is a really cool intersection between anthropology and linguistics - in short the idea is we can look at languages around today and use certain well-founded assumptions about…
on “Great Vowel Shift” ↗