Historical Linguistics

by R.L. Trask

Book Overview

This is a major introduction to historical linguistics, designed for students who have no background in historical linguistics but who have at least some knowledge of phonetics, phonology, and morphology. The author introduces all major types of change, consequences of change (dialect and language families), and methods in historical linguistics. Later chapters deal with sociolinguistic aspects of change, language contact, birth and death of languages,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0340607580
• ISBN13: 9780340607589
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Hodder Education Publishers
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 9.1" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Masterpiece

I have taught university courses with this book for some years now. There were already good books on the market, but when Trask's book was published I soon realized that this was the one I had been waiting for. The books begins with a thorough survey of the various ways in which languages change - lexical of course, semantic, phonological (the most studied area), morphological and syntactic. For many these areas are necessary preliminaries, and they are well covered. There follows a key chapter about the different ways in which languages can be related. Next comes a detailed examination of the methods of historical reconstruction, and then a further two chapters on (sociolinguistic) variation and language contact, including bilingualism and the birth and death of languages. The importance of these areas to Historical Linguistics is emphasized in most modern works, and they are indeed often combined into one interdisciplinary field. Finally there is a survey of recent speculation on the more remote linguistic past of humanity. Although this is a controversial area, I find Trask's judgement here to be impeccable and his comments fair-minded. The whole book is written with an unobtrusive humour, without ever coming close to the "laugh a minute" style of some popularizers of linguistics. At the end of each chapter there is a good selection of thought-provoking exercises. Many of these involve Basque, on which Trask was a great expert, but one can pick and choose. All in all, five stars it is.

An excellent presentation of historical linguistics

As a lay reader, I found the coverage of topics to be impressive and detailed. Sometimes a bit too detailed; but you can always skip over anything that falls into the category of "more than I wanted to know about penguins." But this kind of material gives a sense for the kind of problems that a working linguist faces, and the kinds of solutions obtained. Some readers have complained that there are no solutions given for the homework problems posed. This is true; but in how many non-mathematical books have you seen ANY homework problems posed? I did not stop to do them, myself, but I imagine that a real effort spent on these exercises would pay off in deeper understanding. If the author is willing, I would imagine that there would be a market for a small addendum which would provide discussion of these exercises. The discussion of "proto-World" is very interesting, as the author presents both the proposed picture of the descent of all languages and the general skepticism about it. The book is written with a dry sense of humor, rare in a scholarly book. This is not a quick read, but will repay the diligent reader.

A Fantastic Introductory Text

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in historical linguistics, even those with little background knowledge of the subject (although note that it does assume some basic background knowledge in rudimentary linguistic concepts like "phoneme," "syntax," or "nominative"). One of the largest benefits of the book, in my view, is the fact that Trask, who was one of the foremost experts on the Basque language, frequently uses examples from Basque to illustrate points, very useful additional perspective for those with a knowledge only of Indo-European languages. Trask still, however, uses plenty of examples from the Indo-European field, and does not neglect such famous topics as Grimm's Law or the English Vowel Shift. He provides numerous references for further and more in-depth reading for a given chapter's topic at the end of the chapter, and a brief description of each of these references. He also, as mentioned by a previous reviewer, approaches the debate on alternatives to the comparative method much more even-handedly than some of his colleagues. Although he does dismiss Merritt Ruhlen's Proto-World proposals (offering a good deal of evidence in support), he nonetheless does his best to be more neutral for other controversies, such as the Nostratic hypothesis (the proposal linking the Indo-European, Altaic, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian, and Caucasian language families [and sometimes others]). He even asks other linguists to approach the Nostratic hypothesis fairly and with an open mind. Although he ultimately takes a stance against most radical proposals of this type, he nonetheless gives them a much more balanced portrait, and gives enough opposing arguments to allow readers to draw their own conclusions, which, considering the controversies in the world of historical linguistics today, is particularly impressive. Ultimately, the one significant problem, also touched on by other reviewers, is that the excercizes at the end of each chapter have no solutions, and for those who, like me, study linguistics on their own and not in an academic institution, it is often frustrating to not know if they are doing the problems "right" or not.

A very interesting book

This book might have gotten five stars from me, except for one thing that will be discussed at the end of this review. The book is a good introduction to the principles of historical linguistics, with many clear examples of the techniques used by linguists in tracking back the history of languages. Examples are primarily from English, Latin/Romance, and, oddly enough, Basque. Trask is an American-born linguist teaching in the United Kingdom, and his treatment of developments in the history of the English language is very good. He must also be expert in Basque, as many examples in the book are from Basque and its dialects. One very good thing about the book is that he does not try to impose his own opinions on the reader on topics where linguists are not all in agreement. Thus, he presents the ideas of linguists with whom he disagrees on some of the phyletic relationships among the world's languages, and presents both their arguments and those of their opponents, without putting down the ideas which he does not accept. This level of open-mindedness in a field which still has many controversies is a very strong point in this book. However, if this book is to be used for self-study, rather than as a classroom textbook, it suffers from the fact that each chapter ends with a number of exercises, none of which has answers given. And you can't really be sure you're thinking the way the author wants you to without the answer guide. Perhaps there is an "instructor's version" that has those answers, but if so, that is the one you need to get. This set of exercises without answers is what took my rating down a notch.

Paging Mr. Trask....

Historical Linguistics is an interesting topic to read about. This book does a pretty good job explaining the tool kit an historical linguist needs to reconstruct proto-languages as well as understand language roots. In some cases it seems to be a little off balance, offering more attention to a particular topic and lacking information on another. But all in all it is a helpful text, providing good examples and practice data at the end of each chapter. It is annoying, however, that they didn't pay much attention to the editing. Often a set of data will be referred to in the text but won't show up until the next page or two and the topic of discussion has already changed. The author provides a lot of interesting case studies with discussion, mostly in the English language since that's his native language. But they are great examples of the work accomplished by historical linguists and demonstrate clearly the principles he is discussing. Good book.