Product Description

Historical linguistics is the study of how and why language changes--both the methods of investigating language change and the theories designed to explain these changes. This highly accessible introductory text takes a hands-on, how-to approach, rather than just talking about the subject as many texts do. The book contains abundant examples both from familiar European languages, to make the topics accessible, and from a variety of non-European languages, to illustrate the depth and range of the concepts. The book also covers a number of essential topics neglected by most texts, including syntactic change, methods for investigating distant genetic relationship, linguistic prehistory, and grammaticalization.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #265835 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
"The textbook of choice for courses in historical linguistics."
-- William Poser, Department of Linguistics, University of Northern British Columbia

"The absolutely best textbook in historical linguistics."
-- Theo Vennemann, Department of Linguistics, University of Munich

About the Author
Lyle Campbell is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He is the author of fifteen books, including American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America and Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspectives (with Alice C. Harris), both of which won the Linguistic Society of America's Leonard Bloomfield Award.

Customer Reviews

pretty good although typographical problems
this book was really pretty good. it is a bit difficult in some of the examples for you to work because they use the orthographic tradition it was taken from, so in one example there may be different symbols for the same sound, which is confusing and complicates the problem, but is more similar to real life encounters with this work. also, sometimes there is a dot under a letter, but it looks like it is a dot on the line below above those letters; it is spread too far apart and is sometimes confusing. definitions and terms are criticized for not having any clear definitions, but the ones he gives are just as vague. the book covers a lot and once past the difficulties is pretty good

One of the best introductory textbooks on historical linguistics
I would highly recomment this book to anyone interested in historical linguistics. Having read four introductory textbooks on historical linguistics (Campbell's, R. L. Trask's, Anthony Fox's, and Terry Crowley's), I believe that Campbell's is probably the best. His writing style is clear and accessible, his explanations easy to understand, and his examples drawn from a wide variety of languages, particularly indegenous languages of Central America (Campbell is one of the leading experts in Mayan languages today). His step-by-step description on how to apply the comparative method, in particular, is in my opinion both more detailed and better-illustrated than those in most of his colleague's works. He does assume some knowledge of basic linguistic concepts, but defines those concepts which are more advanced as they come up. The exercises given at the end of each chapter are well-chosen, but unfortunately for those who are not students but merely reading the book outside of a classroom, answers are not provided.

The only complaint I have is not a problem with the writing per se, but with the way the book was printed. Several of the diacritics used in the text (in particular, an upside-down semi-circle placed under a velar consonant to signify that the consonant is fronted or palatalized) do not appear correctly, and show up a line below where they are supposed to be, which tends to interfere with the reading, as it forces you to read slower and return to previous lines to see which characters are supposed to have diacritical marks. This is not a fault of Campbell's, but it does detract somewhat from the reading (hopefully it will be fixed if there is another edition).

A textbook with examples of immense variety
Lyle Campbell's HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS: An Introduction is the latest textbook initiating students into the study of language change. Already in its second edition, the book is quite impressive and I highly recommend it to anyone entering the field.

Campbell begins by discussing three types of change, that of sounds, that of the lexicon in borrowing, and analogical change. After making students aware of these diachronic developments, he then presents the comparative method and the technique of proto-language reconstruction. After showing how regular correspondences indicate development from a common source, Campbell discusses the classification of languages and models of linguistic change. For me, the most exciting chapter is that on internal reconstruction, where Campbell gives a number of examples (not just the usual one of PIE ablaut). The author then covers three others types of change, semantic, lexical, and syntactic. A chapter on areal linguistics familiarises the reader with dialectology, and one on distant genetic relationships introduces theories like Nostratic. Finally, discussion of philology and a chapter on reconstruction of proto-cultures and the hunting of Urheimats closes the book.

The finest aspect of this book is the great variety of languages from which Campbell draws his examples. Many textbooks, such as that of Lehmann, limit their focus mostly to Indo-European, but Campbell also gives attention to Finno-Ugric, Polynesian languages, Semitic, and many indigenous American languages, especially the Mayan languages which the authors seems expert in. In fact, the lack of sticking just to Indo-European makes this a very useful text for budding Indo-Europeanists, because most of the other language family reconstructions make use of typology, a technique only now beginning to be applied to IE. I can make few complaints about the work, though his use of palatal velars in PIE reconstructions seems out of fashion.

This is a real textbook, exercises are abudant and really challenge the student to apply all he has learned. The author does assume students already have some understanding of phonology and general linguistic terminology.

If you are interested in the general field of historical linguistics and have some prior training in linguistics, Campbell's textbook is one of the best primers available and highly worth seeking out.