Customer Reviews

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics)

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The 25 chapters in this anthology provide a comprehensive view of the state of the art in historical linguistics. The topics covered include the methods for establishing linguistic relationships and reconstructing linguistic history, the types and mechanisms of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic change, and the reasons for language change, ranging from phonetics to language contact. The authors are leading figures in the field.

My only criticism is that a few topics have been omitted that might usefully have been included. One is the use of historical linguistics in the study of prehistory. Another is how historical linguists establish the properties of languages in the past, e.g. the interpretation of texts, decipherment, and the various sorts of evidence used to determine pronounciation. A third is an overview of the current status of classification of the world's languages.

The articles in this book may serve both as reviews for professional linguists and as educational material for students, scholars in related fields, and to varying degrees, depending on how technical the area is, for interested lay people.

a customer may not like this book but it's wrong to try and make people think that the authors aren't doing their jobs. i've met brian joseph and he definitely knows what he's talking about. go and purchase the most popular historical linguistics book on amazon (lyle campbell)and see who he thanks in the beginning. there's a difference between giving a book a bad review and slander. the book is actually put together pretty well. if you're not sure what book to choose, go to a decent library and browse for a bit first.

Let's keep this nice and short.

"Language Change and Linguistics
Reconstruction" by Henry Hoenigswald.

Old, yes (1960) but Hoenigswald does not
write about what he does not understand.

Clear, concise, thorough. Five stars,
easily.

Last but not least, you can pick up a
used copy for as little as fiver.