This volume presents the outcome of a workshop, held in Amsterdam in 1985, on the nature, even possibility, of explanation in Historical Linguistics: why changes take place and others do not, and why they occur at a particular time and place. The workshop, and this volume, aim to explore questions such as i) are the factors which explain the actuation of a change different from those that explain its implementation?; ii) is it possible to give a typology of changes?; iii) should linguistic explanation hope to meet the same requirements as explanation in the pure sciences?; iv) are all linguistic changes necessarily the product of variation?; ...
In Basic Linguistic Theory R. M. W. Dixon provides a new and fundamental characterization of the nature of human languages and a comprehensive guide to their description and analysis. In three clearly written and accessible volumes, he describes how best to go about doing linguistics, the most satisfactory and profitable ways to work, and the pitfalls to avoid. In the first volume he addresses the methodology for recording, analysing, and comparing languages. He argues that grammatical structures and rules should be worked out inductively on the basis of evidence, explaining in detail the steps by which an attested grammar and lexicon can built up from observed utterances.
In Basic Linguistic Theory R. M. W. Dixon provides a new and fundamental characterization of the nature of human languages and a comprehensive guide to their description and analysis. In three clearly written and accessible volumes, he describes how best to go about doing linguistics, the most satisfactory and profitable ways to work, and the pitfalls to avoid. Volume 2 offer in-depth tours of underlying principles of grammatical organization, as well as many of the facts of grammatical variation.
Half the world's languages are threatened with extinction over the next century, as English and the rest of the world's top twenty languages drive all before them. What ways of looking at the world will die along with them, what cultural riches, what experiences, histories and memories? And how does it feel to be one of the last remaining speakers of a language that is on its way to extinction? What chance is there of saving any of these languages? Is it feasible in the long term or even worthwhile?
The study of language variation in social context continues to hold the attention of a large number of linguists. This research is promoted by the annual colloquia on New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English' (NWAVE). This volume is a selection of revised papers from the NWAVE XI, held at Georgetown University. It deals with a number of items, some of which have often been discussed, others that have been less emphasized. The first group of articles in the volume center on a frequent theme: speech communities as the essential setting for understanding variation in language.
