1 The fact of language change 1
1.1 Boris Becker's observation 1
1.2 English then and now 2
1.3 Attitudes to language change 7
1.4 The inevitability of change 12
Further reading 13
Exercises 14
2 Lexical and semantic change 17
2.1 Borrowing 17
2.2 Phonological treatment of loans 24
2.3 Morphological treatment of loans 27
2.4 Formation of new words 30
2.5 Change in word-meaning 37
Exercises 47
Further reading 47
3 Phonological change Ⅰ:Change in pronunciation 52
3.1 The phonetic basis of phonological change 52
3.2 Assimilation and dissimilation 53
3.3 Lenition and fortition 55
3.4 Addition and removal of phonetic features 60
3.5 Vowels and syllable structure 63
3.6 Whole-segment processes 66
3.7 The regularity issue:a first look 69
3.8 Summary 70
Further reading 70
Exercises 71
4 Phonological change Ⅱ:Change in phonological systems 76
4.1 Conditioning and rephonologization 76
4.2 Phonological space 82
4.3 Chain shifts 85
4.4 Phonological change as rule change 90
4.5 Summary 95
Further reading 96
Exercises 96
5 Morphological change 102
5.1 Reanalysis 102
5.2 Analogy and levelling 105
5.3 Universal principles of analogy 112
5.4 Morphologization 115
5.5 Morphologization of phonological rules 118
5.6 Change in morphological type 125
Further reading 128
Exercises 129
6.1 Reanalysis of surface structure 133
6 Syntactic change 133
6.2 Shift of markedness 139
6.3 Grammaticalization 143
6.4 Typological harmony 147
6.5 Case study:the rise of ergativity 151
6.6 Syntactic change as restructuring of grammars 156
Further reading 158
Exercises 159
7 Relatedness between languages 165
7.1 The origin of dialects 165
7.2 Dialect geography 170
7.3 Genetic relationships 176
7.4 Tree model and wave model 181
7.5 The language families of the world 187
Exercises 194
Further reading 194
8 The comparative method 202
8.1 Systematic correspondences 202
8.2 Comparative reconstruction 208
8.3 Pitfalls and limitations 216
8.4 The Neogrammarian Hypothesis 224
8.5 Semantic reconstruction 228
8.6 The use of typology and universals 231
8.7 Reconstructing grammar 236
8.8 The reality of proto-languages 239
Further reading 240
Exercises 241
9 Internal reconstruction 248
9.1 A first look at the internal method 248
9.2 Alternations and internal reconstruction 253
9.3 Case study:the laryngeal theory of PIE 256
9.4 Internal reconstruction of grammar and lexicon 260
Further reading 262
Exercises 262
10 The origin and propagation of change 267
10.1 The Saussurean paradox 267
10.2 Variation and social stratification 268
10.3 Variation as the vehicle of change 276
10.4 Lexical diffusion 285
10.5 Near-mergers 290
10.6 A closing note 294
Further reading 296
Exercises 297
11.1 Language contact 308
11 Contact and the birth and death of languages 308
11.2 Linguistic areas 315
11.3 Language birth:pidgins and creoles 317
11.4 Language death 323
11.5 Language planning 330
Further reading 337
Exercises 338
12 Language and prehistory 345
12.1 Etymology 345
12.2 Place names 350
12.3 Linguistic palaeontology 354
12.4 Links with archaeology 356
12.5 Statistical methods 361
Exercises 370
Further reading 370
13 Very remote relations 376
13.1 The mainstream view 376
13.2 A brief history of remote proposals 377
13.3 The Nostratic hypothesis 381
13.4 Greenberg's multilateral comparisons 384
13.5 Towards an evaluation of the macro-families 390
13.6 Towards Proto-World? 391
13.7 The early spread of people and languages 396
13.8 Worldwide loan words? 402
Further reading 403
Exercises 404
Appendix:The Swadesh 200-word list 408
References 410
Index 423
文库索引 431