This advanced historical linguistics course book deals with the historical and comparative study of African languages. The first part functions as an elementary introduction to the comparative method, involving the establishment of lexical and grammatical cognates, the reconstruction of their historical development, techniques for the subclassification of related languages, and the use of language-internal evidence, more specifically the application of internal reconstruction. Part II addresses language contact phenomena and the status of language in a wider, cultural-historical and ecological context. Part III deals with the relationship between comparative linguistics and other disciplines. In this rich course book, the author presents valuable views on a number of issues in the comparative study of African languages, more specifically concerning genetic diversity on the African continent, the status of pidginised and creolised languages, language mixing, and grammaticalisation.

Product Description: Bringing the advances of theoretical linguistics to the study of language change in a systematic way, this innovative textbook demonstrates the mutual relevance of historical linguistics and contemporary linguistics. Numerous case studies throughout the book show both that theoretical linguistics can be used to solve problems where traditional approaches to historical linguistics have failed to produce satisfying results, and that the results of historical research can have an impact on theory...read more

Old Lettie Faraday may know why greedy Gerald Suzman is starting a fan club for minor literary figures Joshua and Susannah Sneddon, Yorkshire siblings and the victims of a fifty-year-old murder-sucide, and Detective Constable Charlie Peace fears for Lettie's life

Product Description: What are the points of contact between the study of language and the study of history? What are the possibilities for collaboration between linguists and historians, and what prevents it? This volume, the proceedings of an international conference held at the University of Bristol in April 2009, presents twenty-two articles by linguists and historians, exploring the relationship between the fields theoretically, conceptually and in practice...read more

Product Description: The Making of Language presents an alternative to the prevalent view of language as the product of human genetics. It argues instead that language originated in the cooperative activity of early humans: "We made language, as we made pots and pans...read more

Product Description: This is a massive volume of fifty-four papers in memory of Sandor Bokonyi, the eminent Hungarian zooarchaeologist and author of an impressively long list of publications. The papers, by archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, historians, anthropologists and comparative linguists, reflect the multi-disciplinary nature of his work...read more

Product Description: This volume unites papers given by members of the North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences (NAAHoLS) at meetings held in Washington, D.C., in March and December 1989, respectively. They represent the scope and breadth of interest of North American scholars in this growing field, ranging from linguistic concepts, ideas, and theories in the Classical Greek and Roman period to developments in grammatical theory and sociolinguistics in the second half of the 20th century, and from the study of American Indian languages in the 17th through the present century and the philosophy of language from Aristotle to John Locke, to F...read more