Change And Language

This new introduction explores all aspects of language change, with an emphasis on the role of cognition and language use.

Research on creolization, language change, and language acquisition has been converging toward a triangulation of the constraints along which grammatical systems develop within individual speakers--and (viewed externally) across generations of speakers. The originality of this volume is in its comparison of various sorts of language development from a number of linguistic-theoretic and empirical perspectives, using data from both speech and gestural modalities and from a diversity of acquisition environments. In turn, this comparison yields fresh insights on the mental bases of language creation.The book is organized into five parts: creolization and acquisition; acquisition under exceptional circumstances; language processing and syntactic change; parameter setting in acquisition and through creolization and language change; and a concluding part integrating the contributors' observations and proposals into a series of commentaries on the state of the art in our understanding of language development, its role in creolization and diachrony, and implications for linguistic theory.Contributors : Dany Adone, Derek Bickerton, Adrienne Bruyn, Marie Coppola, Michel DeGraff, Viviane D�prez, Alison Henry, Judy Kegl, David Lightfoot, John S. Lumsden, Salikoko S. Mufwene, Pieter Muysken, Elissa L. Newport, Luigi Rizzi, Ian Roberts, Ann Senghas, Rex A. Sprouse, Denise Tangney, Anne Vainikka, Barbara S. Vance, Maaike Verrips.

This textbook analyses changes from every area of grammar and addresses recent developments in socio-historical linguistics.

Through integrating different perspectives on language change, this book explores the enormous on-going linguistic upheavals in the wake of the global dominance of English. Combining empirical research with theoretical approaches, it will appeal to researchers and graduate students of English, and also of other languages studying language change.

Why does language change? Why can we speak to and understand our parents but have trouble reading Shakespeare? Why is Chaucer's English of the fourteenth century so different from Modern English of the late twentieth century that the two are essentially different languages? Why are Americans and English 'one people divided by a common language'? And how can the language of Chaucer and Modern English - or Modern British and American English - still be called the same language? The present book provides answers to questions like these in a straightforward way, aimed at the non-specialist, with ample illustrations from both familiar and more exotic languages. Most chapters in this new edition have been reworked, with some difficult passages removed, other passages thoroughly rewritten, and several new sections added, e.g. on the regularity of sound change and its importance for general historical-comparative linguistics. Further, the chapter notes and bibliography have all been updated. The content is engaging, focusing on topics and issues that spark student interest. Its goals are broadly pedagogical and the level and presentation are appropriate for interested beginners with little or no background in linguistics. The language coverage for examples goes well beyond what is usual for books of this kind, with a considerable amount of data from various languages of India.

This is a lucid and up-to-date overview of language change. It discusses where our evidence about language change comes from, how and why changes happen, and how languages begin and end. It considers both changes which occurred long ago, and those currently in progress. It does this within the framework of one central question - is language change a symptom of progress or decay? It concludes that language is neither progressing nor decaying, but that an understanding of the factors surrounding change is essential for anyone concerned about language alteration. For this substantially revised third edition, Jean Aitchison has included two new chapters on change of meaning and grammaticalization. Sections on new methods of reconstruction and ongoing chain shifts in Britain and America have also been added as well as over 150 new references. The work remains non-technical in style and accessible to readers with no previous knowledge of linguistics.

Why does language change? Why can we speak to and understand our parents but have trouble reading Shakespeare? Why is Chaucer's English of the fourteenth century so different from Modern English of the late twentieth century that the two are essentially different languages? Why are Americans and English 'one people divided by a common language'? And how can the language of Chaucer and Modern English - or Modern British and American English - still be called the same language? The present book provides answers to questions like these in a straightforward way, aimed at the non-specialist, with ample illustrations from both familiar and more exotic languages. Most chapters in this new edition have been reworked, with some difficult passages removed, other passages thoroughly rewritten, and several new sections added, e.g. on language and race and on Indian writing systems. Further, the chapter notes and bibliography have all been updated. The content is engaging, focusing on topics and issues that spark student interest. Its goals are broadly pedagogical and the level and presentation are appropriate for interested beginners with little or no background in linguistics. The language coverage for examples goes well beyond what is usual for books of this kind, with a considerable amount of data from various languages of India.

Language Standardization and Language Change describes the formation of an early standard norm at the Cape around 1900. The processes of variant reduction and sociolinguistic focusing which accompanied the early standardization history of Afrikaans (or 'Cape Dutch' as it was then called) are analysed within the broad methodological framework of corpus linguistics and variation analysis. Multivariate statistical techniques (cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling and PCA) are used to model the emergence of linguistic uniformity in the Cape Dutch speech community. The book also examines language contact and creolization in the early settlement, the role of Afrikaner nationalism in shaping language attitudes and linguistic practices, and the influence of English. As a case study in historical sociolinguistics the book calls into question the traditional view of the emergence of an Afrikaans standard norm, and advocates a strongly sociolinguistic, speaker-orientated approach to language history in general, and standardization studies in particular.

This book adopts a wide focus on the range of East Asian languages, in both their pre-modern and modern forms, within the specific topic area of language change. It contains sections on dialect studies, contact linguistics, socio-linguistics and syntax/phonology and deals with all three major languages of East Asia: Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Individual chapters cover pre-Sino-Japanese phonology, nominalizers in Chinese, Japanese and Korean; Japanese loanwords in Taiwan Mandarin; changes in Korean honorifics; the tense and aspect system of Japanese; and language policy in Japan. The book will be of interest to linguists working on East Asian languages, and will be of value to a range of general linguists working in comparative or historical linguistics, socio-linguistics, language typology and language contact.

In line with the overall perspective of the Handbook series, the focus of Vol.9 is on language-related problems arising in the context of linguistic diversity and change, and the contributions Applied Linguistics can offer for solutions. Part I, “Language minorities and inequality,” presents situations of language contact and linguistic diversity as world-wide phenomena. The focus is on indigenous and immigrant linguistic minorities, their (lack of) access to linguistic rights through language policies and the impact on their linguistic future .Part II “Language planning and language change,” focuses on the impact of colonialism, imperialism, globalisation and economics as factors that language policies and planning measures must account for in responding to problems deriving from language contact and linguistic diversity. Part III, “Language variation and change in institutional contexts,” examines language-related problems in selected institutional areas of communication (education, the law, religion, science, the Internet) which will often derive from socioeconomic, cultural and other non-linguistic asymmetries. Part IV, “The discourse of linguistic diversity and language change,” analyses linguistic diversity, language change and language reform as issues of public debates which are informed by different ideological positions, values and attitudes (e.g. with reference to sexism, racism, and political correctness).The volume also contains extensive reference sections and index material.