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Loading... Historical Linguistics: an Introduction (edition 1992)by Winifred P. Lehmann
Work InformationHistorical Linguistics: An Introduction by Winfred P. Lehmann
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. As the title says, this is an introduction to the subject of historical linguistics, the discipline that took off when European scholars and administrators like Willam Jones (Chief Judge in Calcutta) observed the similarities and parallels between Sanskrit and its descendats in India wih the classical languages like Greek and Latin, as well as contemporary languages of Europe. In course of time the whole gamut of languages oNorth India, Asia and Europe were classifies into different families and sub-families, with the implication that they all branched out from some parent language or bunch of dialects. The initial chapters, which talk of such relationships, are quite appealng, but the going gets a little tougher as the author gets into the details of sound change, grammar change, and so on, taking the European languages as examples. Of course this is a bit dated, although Lehmann is well known as a doyen of Indo-European comparative linguistics. I would have enjoyed it more if he had dwelt more on Indo-Iranian and its relation with Baltic and Slavic, which of course may not have been well researched at the time of this publication. ( ) Heavy going for the non-academic reader, but worth the trudge -- though note that this was published in 1993, and there have been important developments in the field since then. The first part of this book is an overview of how research in historical linquistics is carried out: the second part looks at the various ways in which language change occurs. no reviews | add a review
Historical Linguistics provides a comprehensive and clearly written introduction to historical linguistic theory and methods. Since its first publication in 1962 the book has established itself as core reading for students of linguistics. This edition has been thoroughly revised. Drawing on recent linguistic and archaeological research Professor Lehmann incorporates key developments in the field. These include exciting advances in the history and development of writing: and in typological classification which allows better understanding of the structure of early languages. Well-illustrated with Indo-European examples, and supplementary exercises which draw on data from other language families as well, the book will enable students to carry out independent work in historical studies on any language family, as well as up-to-date work in Indo-European. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)417.7Language Linguistics Dialectology and historical linguistics Historical linguistics (Diachronic linguistics)LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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