This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.
This book covers the historical development of the English phonological system from its earliest reconstructed and recorded forms to its most recent variations.
From language creator David J. Peterson comes a creative gui de to language constructio, offering an overview of language creation, covering its history from Tolkien's creations and Klingon to today's thriving global community of conlangers. He provides the essential tools necessary for inventing and evolving new languages, using examples from a variety of languages including his own creations.
Is American English in decline? Are regional dialects dying out? Is there a difference between men and women in how they adapt to linguistic variations? These questions, and more, about our language catapulted Robert MacNeil and William Cran—the authors (with Robert McCrum) of the language classic The Story of English—across the country in search of the answers. Do You Speak American? is the tale of their discoveries, which provocatively show how the standard for American English—if a standard exists—is changing quickly and dramatically. On a journey that takes them from the Northeast, through Appalachia and the Deep South, and west to California, the authors observe everyday verbal interactions and in a host of interviews with native speakers glean the linguistic quirks and traditions characteristic of each area. While examining the histories and controversies surrounding both written and spoken American English, they address anxieties and assumptions that, when explored, are highly emotional, such as the growing influence of Spanish as a threat to American English and the special treatment of African-American vernacular English. And, challenging the purists who think grammatical standards are in serious deterioration and that media saturation of our culture is homogenizing our speech, they surprise us with unpredictable responses. With insight and wit, MacNeil and Cran bring us a compelling book that is at once a celebration and a potent study of our singular language. Each wave of immigration has brought new words to enrich the American language. Do you recognize the origin of 1. blunderbuss, sleigh, stoop, coleslaw, boss, waffle? Or 2. dumb, ouch, shyster, check, kaput, scram, bummer? Or 3. phooey, pastrami, glitch, kibbitz, schnozzle? Or 4. broccoli, espresso, pizza, pasta, macaroni, radio? Or 5. smithereens, lollapalooza, speakeasy, hooligan? Or 6. vamoose, chaps, stampede, mustang, ranch, corral? 1. Dutch 2. German 3. Yiddish 4. Italian 5. Irish 6. Spanish
Written by the world-renowned pioneer in the field of modern sociolinguistics, this volume examines the cognitive and cultural factors responsible for linguistic change, tracing the life history of these developments, from triggering events to driving forces and endpoints. Explores the major insights obtained by combining sociolinguistics with the results of dialect geography on a large scale Examines the cognitive and cultural influences responsible for linguistic change Demonstrates under what conditions dialects diverge from one another Establishes an essential distinction between transmission within the community and diffusion across communities Completes Labov’s seminal Principles of Linguistic Change trilogy
Through his analysis of selected major developments in the history of English, Jeremy Smith argues that the history of the language can only be understood from a dynamic perspective. He proposes that internal linguistic mechanisms for language change cannot be meaningfully explained in isolation or without reference to external linguistic factors. Smith provides the reader with an accessible synthesis of recent developments in English historical linguistics. His book: Looks at the theory and methodology of linguistic historiography . Considers the major changes in writing systems, pronunciation and grammar. Provides examples of these changes, such as the standardisation of spellings and accent and the origins of the Great Vowel Shift Focuses on the origins of two non-standard varieties; eighteenth century Scots and twentieth century British Black English.This book makes fascinating reading for students of English Historical linguistics, and is an original, important and above all, lively contribution to the field.
English historical linguistics is a subfield of linguistics which has developed theories and methods for exploring the history of the English language. This Handbook provides an account of state-of-the-art research on this history. It offers an in-depth survey of materials, methods, and language-theoretical models used to study the long diachrony of English. The frameworks covered include corpus linguistics, historical sociolinguistics, historical pragmatics and manuscript studies, among others. The chapters, by leading experts, examine the interplay of language theory and empirical data throughout, critically assessing the work in the field. Of particular importance are the diverse data sources which have become increasingly available in electronic form, allowing the discipline to develop in new directions. The Handbook offers access to the rich and many-faceted spectrum of work in English historical linguistics, past and present, and will be useful for researchers and students interested in hands-on research on the history of English.
