Language Change edited by Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Carr, Gerald F., editor.

Rauch, Irmengard, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Linguistic change.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 274 pages)

Place of Publication:

Indiana University Press 1983

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1983.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 the 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.

Contents:

The elliptical idiom : change from icon and index to symbol / Barbara D. Greim

Prosodic change in progress : evidence from Estonian / Ilse Lehiste

Evolution of a semantic set : text, discourse, narrative / Irmengard Rauch

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

History of language change as it affects syntax / Winfred P. Lehmann

Low-back vowels in Providence : a note in structural dialectology / Raven I. McDavid, Jr

Netherlandic contributions to the dabate on language change : from Lambert ten Kate to Josef Vercoullie

Paideia, a linguistic subcode / Henry and Renee Kahane

Alternatives to the classic dichotomy family tree/wave theory? The romance evidence / Yakov Malkiel

Sociocultural aspects of language change / Els Oksaar.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-253-05425-7

OCLC:

1259584655