Publisher's Synopsis
People are curious about and interested in language change. They want to know about the history of words, they want explanations for things they perceive as "unusual" or "weird" in their language, and they have strong opinions about the changes they see going on in the language around them. Despite this, our schools do not typically equip us to be able to satisfy this curiosity or pursue this interest, and unfortunately we are poorly served by pronouncements on these matters from self-appointed language pundits (language police) in their many newspaper columns, radio broadcasts, and popular books. How and Why Does Language Change is aimed at filling this gap, at satisfying curiosity about language change and in so doing to provide readers with a fundamental understanding of historical linguistics. It is therefore a non-technical, accessible book aimed at readers with a wide variety of backgrounds and interests and it presumes no background in linguistics. In order to ensure accessibility and to make it engaging, most of its very abundant examples are drawn from English, with reference to other languages when relevant.
Tentative Table of Contents
Chapter 1: What's wrong?: Debunking the myths and misconceptions about language change.
This chapter introduces historical linguistics, but in an indirect way. By exposing various common misconceptions about language change it reveals basic concepts of historical linguists and how historical linguists deal with change in language. The questions asked (and answered) here include the likes of: is language change corruption/degeneration/decay?; are the causes of language change laziness/immorality, or, if not, what are they?; are some languages 'primitive' and therefore subject to different kinds of changes from those found in 'civilized' languages?; does language change work differently in written languages from those without writing?; does the influence of the modern media cause rapid change?; does size count? (is English a better language because it has a really big dictionary? - or, better said, where does vocabulary come from?); is change faster in some languages than others?; and so on.
Chapter 2: The (not so) secret history of words: Where do words come from and how do they change?
Etymologies of a number of words are presented in this chapter in a diliberate attempt to capitalize on the wide public interest in the history of words, to get readers hooked on the subject matter, and then, in explaining what etymology is, to draw readers slowly and subtly to understand fundamental concepts of historical linguistics.
The chapter begins with a series of "swashbuckling" etymologies, words whose meaning conjures up the sort of romantic history and lore that many who are interested in the history of words enjoy, examples such as 'steed' (and 'stud'); 'king', 'knight', and 'knave'; 'weapon' and 'war', 'sword', 'arrow'; 'stalwart', 'guile' and 'beguile'; 'witch' and 'hex'; 'kith' (and 'kin'); 'meal' and 'meat'; 'town' and 'timber', 'hearth' and 'home'; 'horse' and 'cow'; 'poison', 'venom', 'murder', and 'mayhem'; etc. Some of these will involve the ever-catchy how-to-get-there-from-here sort of cases, examples of the sort which show how 'cow' and 'beef' come from the same original Indo-European word via regular sound changes (and some late borrowing). In another section, the etymologies of a number of place names are given, for example those of Russia, England, Hungary, Gibraltar, Mexico, London, Jerusalem, Europe, and so on. Another section provides etymologies for a number of personal names, both surnames and Christian (first) names. The final section, by making use of the examples given in the previous sections, presents an overview of historical linguistic principles involved in working out these word histories.
Chapter 3: Linguistic mooching: Borrowing and loanwords.
This chapter, in a certain sense, continues the story started in chapter two with word histories, though in this case dedicated to borrowed words. However, its real mission is to get at how and why languages borrow and how linguists deal with loanwords. Its several sections are organized around the loans in English from particular languages and presented in such a way that the contents of the loanwords dealt with reveal the historical stories of contacts that led to the borrowings. Thus there are sections entitled: 'The Viking story', 'The French connection', 'Latin pretensions', and 'Vocabulary riches from around the world - contributions from other languages.
Chapter 4: Why is English so messy - where do all those exceptions and irregularities come from?: Sound change
This chapter serves two purposes. It intends to satisfy curiosities about exceptions and why things don't fit expected patterns by explaining the changes which gave us such examples as 'goose/geese'; 'wife/wives'; 'child/children'; 'holy' but 'holiday'; how 'chill', 'cool' and 'cold' are related; how 'bake' and 'batch' connect; how the strong verbs got to be as they are (examples such as 'sing/sang/sung', 'stand/stood'); why the verb 'to be' has so many seemingly unconnected forms: be/am/is/are/was/were'; and so on. In addressing these irregularities and interesting oddities, the book explains in a very straightforward way what sound change is, how it produced these things, and through these examples provides an understanding of the major sound changes that have taken place in English, for example [with technical names mentioned here, but presented in the book without the daunting technicalities] umlaut, intervocalic voicing of fricatives, the great vowel shift, trisyllabic shortening, etc. This chapter also explains Grimm's law and Verner's law, and their importance in historical linguistic thinking, through examples in English vocabulary contrasting words of Germanic origin with corresponding ones from Latinate or French loans, for example for Grimm's law father-paternal/paternity, foot-pedestrian/pedestal/bi-pedal, tooth-dental, etc. (supplemented also by charts of real cognates illustrating these changes in comparisons of English and words from first French and then later from classical Indo-European languages).
Chapter 5: How do languages clean up their act?: Analogy.
Numerous fetching examples of analogical changes in English are presented which illustrate the various kinds of analogy, e.g. folk etymology, hypercorrection, and so on. These too are things about which people are curious and want to know the 'why' behind them. In the course of the exposition, readers come to appreciate what linguists know well, that sound changes (though regular in their operation) often cause irregularities in related forms (e.g. mouse/mice) while analogical changes often (but not always) regularize the these irregular patterns (strive/strove/striven > strive/strived/strived and grow/grew/grown > grow/growed/growed in dialects).
Chapter 6: Can languages change their grammatical spots?, and old grammars learn new grammatical tricks?: Change in grammar.
The basics of grammatical change (change in morphology and syntax) are presented through readily accessible examples. In the course of unpacking and explaining these examples, readers gain an understanding of grammaticalization, reanalysis, extension, and grammatical borrowing, as well as an appreciation of some of the major grammatical changes in the history English.
Chapter 7: All in the family: Language classification and comparison.
What becomes of languages when they change? How language, when it undergoes changes, can develop dialect differences and then with further change, can split up into distinct but related languages is to main topic here. The notion of a language family is explained and exemplified. The major language families of the world are characterized briefly, and how we get to English from Indo-European is spelled out. The comparative method is introduced and illustrated, and its role in historical linguistics explained.
Chapter 8: What's writing got to do with anything, anyway?: Writing systems and language change.
The relationship between written and spoken language is explained. The origin and development of several major writing systems is considered, and kinds of writing systems are characterized, together with the story of the decipherment of several ancient scripts. All this is intended to lead up to an explication of how historical linguists use old written attestations of language to understand more about the history of the languages themselves, illustrated with examples from the history of English.
Chapter 10: Is linguistic Armageddon nigh?: The present and future of language change.
The focus of this chapter is endangered languages, why the problem is so serious, what has brought it about and what can be done about it, and what this means for attempts to work out the history of languages. Social and cultural aspects of on-going language change are also brought into the picture, including discussion of claims about the role of gender in change, the difference between apparent-time and real-time investigations of on-going language change, the impact (or lack thereof) of the media in language change.
