Publisher's description: The Handbook of Historical Linguistics provides a detailed account of the numerous issues, methods, and results that characterize current work in historical linguistics, the area of linguistics concerned with language change as well as past language states. It provides a comprehensive and current account of the numerous issues, methods, and results that characterize historical linguistics. It contains an extensive introduction that places the study of historical linguistics in its proper context within linguistics and the historical sciences in general. The book covers the methodology of historical linguistics and presents sophisticated overviews of the principles governing phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic change. It includes contributions from the leading specialists in the field.