Comparative Method Reviewed - Regularity and Irregularity in Language Change

Zusatztext This wonderfully stimulating book... takes an honorable place in modern scholarship on reconstruction and language relatedness. Drawing on 'difficult' data from largely non-Indo-European languages... it highlights what the standard linguistics textbooks do not - the 'rough edges'! the problems with the received wisdom. Klappentext Historical reconstruction of languages relies on the comparative method! which itself depends on the notion of the regularity of change. The regularity of sound change is the famous Neogrammarian Hypothesis: "sound change takes place according to laws that admit no exception." The comparative method! however! is not restricted to the consideration of sound change! and neither is the assumption of regularity. Syntactic! morphological! and semantic change are all amenable in varying degrees! to comparative reconstruction! and each type of change is constrained in ways that enable the researcher to distinguish between regular and more irregular changes. This volume draws together studies by scholars engaged in historical reconstruction! all focussing on the subject of regularity and irregularity in the comparative method. A wide range of languages are represented! including Chinese! Germanic! and Austronesian. Zusammenfassung Durie and Ross have drawn together previously unpublished papers by linguists engaged in historical reconstruction! on the subject of regularity and irregularity in the comparative method. A number of language families are represented.

Product details

• Authors: Mark Ross Durie
• Assisted by: Mark Durie (Editor), Mark (Senior Research Fellow Durie (Editor), Durie Mark (Editor), Malcolm Ross (Editor), Malcolm (Fellow in Linguistics Ross (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 16.05.1996
• EAN: 9780195066074
• ISBN: 978-0-19-506607-4
• No. of pages: 328
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Historical & comparative linguistics, Historical and comparative linguistics