All languages change, just as other aspects of human society are constantly changing. This book is an introduction to the concepts and techniques of diachronic linguistics--the study of language change over time. It covers all the major areas of historical linguistics, presenting concepts in a clear and concise way. While examples are given from a wide range of languages, most major concepts and techniques are illustrated by material drawn from the languages of Australia and the Pacific. The needs of undergraduate students of linguistics have been kept firmly in mind, but the book will also be of interest to the general reader seeking to understand language and language change. This third edition includes a number of rewritten and supplemented sections and new material on grammaticalization, ergativity and accusativity, language diversification, palaeolinguistics, and morphological evolution.
This is a textbook used for my introductory comparative and historical linguistics course. It is a good choice because it is easy to read and to understand. It provides foundation knowledge on languages formation then begins to discuss different topics covered in the comparative and historical linguistics. It gives plenty of exercises for practice and discussion. (unfortunately there is no solution provided) Some of them are pretty challenging and need some thoughts to solve them. I highly recommend this book you all of you.
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