Millennia of Language Change - Sociolinguistic Studies in Deep Historical Linguistics

This collection brings together Peter Trudgill's essays on the sociolinguistic aspects of historical linguistics for the first time.

List of contents

Acknowledgements; Prologue. The long view; 1. Prehistoric sociolinguistics and the uniformitarian hypothesis: what were stone-age languages like?; 2. From Ancient Greek to Comanche: on many millennia of complexification; 3. First-millennium England: a tale of two copulas; 4. The first three-thousand years: contact in prehistoric and early historic English; 5. Verners law, Germanic dialects, and the English dialect 'default singulars'; 6. Deep into the Pacific: the Austronesian migrations and the linguistic consequences of isolation; 7. The Hellenistic Koiné 320 BC to 550 AD and its medieval congeners; 8. Indo-European feminines: contact, diffusion and gender loss around the North Sea; Sources; References.

About the author

Peter Trudgill is a world-renowned theoretical dialectologist, with Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Uppsala, East Anglia, La Trobe, British Colombia, and Patras. Recent publications include Dialects Matters: Respecting Vernacular Language (2016) and Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics (2010).

Summary

This latest collection of Peter Trudgill's most seminal articles brings together his writing on the sociolinguistic aspects of historical linguistics for the first time. Aimed at academics and students, the book will arouse interest and provoke discussion through its wide-ranging linguistic-geographical coverage and its broad historical focus.

Product details

• Authors: Peter Trudgill, Peter (Universite De Fribourg Trudgill, Trudgill Peter
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.06.2020
• EAN: 9781108477390
• ISBN: 978-1-108-47739-0
• Dimensions: 157 mm x 235 mm x 12 mm
• Subjects: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General, Sociolinguistics, Historical & comparative linguistics, Historical and comparative linguistics