Hickey: Language change review

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If you are interested in topics like language change, but you don't know where to begin,
I am going to introduce a good textbook about this topic.
It's Raymond Hickey's Language Change.
In this work you can learn about the nature of language change, why change happens, the
methods that deals with change, language typology, language contact and language variations.
All languages change and they change regularly.
However, the branch of linguistics, the historical linguistics which deals with language change,
posed only the 'how' question and not the 'why'.
Languages can change by internal and external motivation.
Change can be gradual or global.
He says that it is possible to find models for unchanging languages as well.
The speakers try to stop the change consciously.
Even though, the process can be leaded consciously, it is impossible to predict language change.
The author describes the techniques of historical linguistics like comparative method, internal
reconstruction, consistency of orthography, rhyme material and reverse spelling.
He touches topics like relative chronology, which is the method of dating certain changes.
He divides two main types of analogy: proportional analogy and analogical levelling.
Lexicalization and grammaticalization are unavoidable terms in the field of language
change.
Lexicalization is when certain words are transparent in their composition or in the derivational
process.
For example, the English asleep derives from Old English 'on sleep'.
Grammaticalization is a process when certain words enter new grammatical categories.
Any word class can be subject to grammaticalization.
This process is unidirectional, although there are debates in this regard.
He gives instances of language change like phonological changes, morphological change,
semantic change and shifts in syntax and lexicon.
He dedicates a chapter for typology which is a classification of languages according
to their grammatical type and not their historical backgrounds.
The two main types are: analytic and synthetic.
Analytical languages show few inflections and they have fixed word order while synthetic
languages have complex morphology.
In the next chapters, he focuses on language contact like language shift, dialects and
areal linguistics and language variations like pidgins and creoles.
It's a nice overview of language change in general.
Do you know good books or articles in this topic?
Leave me a comment.
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Hickey: Language change review

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