Bowern Claire Louise - The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics

Handbooks have formed an important and noble tradition within historical linguistics, and many great discoveries in our field have been reported in handbooks. This volume, with the innovative range of topics it covers and the stellar line-up of authors contained within it, continues that tradition successfully, offering a compelling, and interesting, overview of the field.

Brian D. Joseph, The Ohio State University

This handbook provides high level scholarship on traditional areas of historical linguistic research, as well as on areas less frequently inquired by historical linguists, such as sign language. It also contains different theoretical perspectives on language change and language reconstruction, along with state-of-the-art surveys on a number of lesser-studied language families. All these features make up for a welcome addition to the field of historical linguistics, and a profitable read both for students and for practicing linguists.

Sylvia Luraghi, Universit di Pavia, Italy

The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics provides a state-of-the-art survey of this well-established field of linguistics. Thanks to recent technological advances and the rise in availability of large-scale datasets, the importance of diachrony as a key to understanding human language has been reinforced. This Handbook unites an international group of scholars with expertise in a range of fields relating to the study of language change, and their chapters encompass:

an overview of the main current and critical trends

the methods which underpin current work

an analysis of the relationship between the diachronic and synchronic study of the topic

models of language change

examples from primary data

the importance of historical linguistics for other subfields of linguistics and other disciplines.

Focusing on the synthesis of work on synchrony and diachrony and bringing together diverse aspects of work that relate to language change, this Handbook is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students working in this area.

Claire Bowern is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Yale University.

Bethwyn Evans is Research Fellow in Linguistics at the Australian National University.

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First published 2015

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2015 selection and editorial matter, Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans; individual chapters, the contributors

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics / edited by Claire Bowern, Bethwyn Evans.

pages cm. -- (Routledge handbooks in linguistics)

1. Historical linguistics--Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Bowern, Claire, 1977- (editor)

II. Evans, Bethwyn, (editor) III. Title: Handbook of historical linguistics.

P140.R68 2014

417--dc23

2013049197

ISBN: 978-0-415-52789-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-79401-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman and ITC Stone Sans

by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans

Roger Lass

Paul Kiparsky

Nigel Vincent

Michael Weiss

Mark Hale

Alexandre Franois

Michael Dunn

Sren Wichmann

Andrew Garrett

Silke Hamann

Stephen R. Anderson

Harold Koch

Zygmunt Frajzyngier

Elly van Gelderen

Jhanna Bardal

Matthias Urban

Ashwini Deo

Alexandra DArcy

Robert Mailhammer

Susan D. Fischer

James N. Stanford

Lev Michael

Joan Bybee and Clay Beckner

Christopher Lucas

Jane Simpson

Simon J. Greenhill

Patience Epps

Paul Heggarty

Brigitte Pakendorf

Benjamin W. Fortson IV

Ritsuko Kikusawa

Paul Sidwell

Luisa Miceli

Sarah G. Thomason

Stephen R. Anderson is the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale University. His interests include most areas of general and historical linguistics, as well as the study of the place of human language in the biological world.

Jhanna Bardal is a Research Associate Professor at Ghent University, Belgium. She is the author of two monographs: Case in Icelandic: A Synchronic, Diachronic and Comparative Approach (2001) and Productivity: Evidence from Case and Argument Structure in Icelandic (2008). She is a founding co-editor of the Journal of Historical Linguistics and a founding series co-editor of Brills Studies in Historical Linguistics. She is currently running a research project on the Emergence of Non-Canonical Case Marking in Indo-European, funded by the Norwegian Research Council (20112015) and an ERC-funded research project on the Evolution of Case, Alignment and Argument Structure in Indo-European (20132018).