Historical Linguistics

US: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Paperback. Historical Linguistics is concerned with the process of language change thr ough time. It investigates how and why the language of individuals, a socia l group or a whole 'speech community' develops in respect of its pronunciat ion, vocabulary and grammar. Dr Bynon regards language as essentially a dyn amic phenomenon, whose character can be at best only partly understood by a static, and necessarily idealized, synchronic approach. In Part I she esta blishes the theoretical framework by providing a systematic survey of the t hree main models of language development - the neogrammarian, structuralist , and transformational generative. Examples drawn substantially from Englis h and German, but also from classical languages, French, Welsh and a variet y of others, are used to explain and compare these approaches. In Part II s he turns to sociolinguistics and shows how changes within a language over a period of time, and changes brought about by contact between languages, ar e both indicators and agents of more general cultural developments. Account s of bilingualism and of pidgin and Creole languages are included as well a s wider-ranging examples of different kinds of borrowing such as loan words , loan translations and extensions of meaning. The student is provided with a practical and critical guide both to what has been done and what can be done to discover and verify these linguistic relationships. Designed primar ily as a textbook for linguistics and philology students, this book will al so be of interest to those studying English language, classics and modern l anguages.