Language change : progress or decay?
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Language change : progress or decay?
(Cambridge approaches to linguistics)
Cambridge University Press, 1991
2nd ed
- : hard
- : pbk
Available at 99 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
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  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
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  United States of America
Note
Bibliography: p. 237-251
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Why do people sometimes leave off the ends of words when they speak? Is it sloppiness, progress, or inevitable erosion? This book attempts to answer such questions by giving 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 and why languages begin and end. It considers not only changes which occurred many years ago, but also 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 causing change is essential for anyone involved with language alteration. For this substantially revised and enlarged second edition Jean Aitchison has included details of recent research on a number of key topics, and also discusses data from a wider variety of languages: but the work remains non-technical in style and accessible to the reader with no previous knowledge of linguistics.
Table of Contents
- Part I. Preliminaries: 1. The ever-whirling wheel
- 2. Collecting up clues
- 3. Charting the changes
- Part II. Transition: 4. Spreading the word
- 5. Conflicting loyalties
- 6. Catching on and taking off
- 7. Caught in the web
- Part III. Causation: 8. The reason why
- 9. Doing what comes naturally
- 10. Repairing the patterns
- 11. The Mad Hatter's Tea-Party
- Part IV. Beginnings and Endings: 12. Development and breakdown
- 13. Language birth
- 14. Language death
- 15. Progress or decay?
by "Nielsen BookData"