An Introduction to Historical Linguistics

Citation

Crowley, T., & Bowern, C. (2010). An Introduction to Historical Linguistics (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book has fifteen chapters, followed by a section of datasets (pp. 327–344), notes, a list of language references, references and an index. By the page numbers in the contents, the text runs to about 325 pages before the datasets. The publisher's description presents it as an introduction to the concepts and techniques of diachronic linguistics, covering all the major areas of the field in a clear and concise way, with examples from a wide range of languages and special emphasis on the languages of Australia and the Pacific. The chapters fall into four stretches: sound change, methods of reconstruction and classification, change in grammar and meaning, and the social side of change.

Chapters 1–4: Introduction; Types of Sound Change; Expressing Sound Changes; Phonetic and Phonemic Change

Chapter 1 (about 20 pages) introduces the subject. Chapter 2 (about 32 pages) is the longest of the opening group and classifies types of sound change. Chapter 3 (about ten pages) is on expressing sound changes, and Chapter 4 (about 13 pages) covers phonetic and phonemic change.

Chapters 5–9: The Comparative Method (1): Procedures; Determining Relatedness; Internal Reconstruction; Computational and Statistical Methods; The Comparative Method (2): History and Challenges

The methods chapters are the core of the book. Chapter 5 (about 30 pages) sets out the procedures of the comparative method, and Chapter 6 (about 13 pages) turns to the question of how relatedness among languages is determined. Chapter 7 (about 15 pages) covers internal reconstruction. Chapter 8 (about 26 pages) presents computational and statistical methods, and the publisher lists statistical methods in language classification as new in this edition. Chapter 9 (about 22 pages) returns to the comparative method with its history and its challenges.

Chapters 10–12: Morphological Change; Semantic and Lexical Change; Syntactic Change

Chapter 10 (about 15 pages) covers morphological change, and the publisher names grammaticalization among the new sections of this edition. Chapter 11 (about 18 pages) treats changes in meaning and vocabulary, and Chapter 12 (about 29 pages) is the longest of the three, devoted to syntactic change.

Chapters 13–15: Observing Language Change; Language Contact; Cultural Reconstruction

Chapter 13 (about 18 pages) is about observing language change. Chapter 14 (about 35 pages), the longest chapter in the book, is on language contact, and Chapter 15 (about 28 pages) on cultural reconstruction.

Datasets and back matter

The datasets (about 18 pages) provide language data for practice. The publisher lists many new problems and several new datasets among the changes in the fourth edition, and the notes, language references and references follow.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4

• Sound change: its types, the ways of expressing it, and its phonetic and phonemic aspects.

Chapters 5–9

• Comparative method: reconstruction of an earlier language by comparing related languages (Chapters 5 and 9).
• Relatedness: the evidence needed to show that languages share an ancestor (Chapter 6).
• Internal reconstruction: inferring earlier forms from patterns within a single language (Chapter 7).
• Computational and statistical classification: the methods of Chapter 8.

Chapters 10–15

• Morphological, semantic, lexical and syntactic change, with grammaticalization.
• Language contact: contact as a source of change (Chapter 14); pidgins and creoles are among the recurring terms in the text.
• Cultural reconstruction: the topic of Chapter 15, as its title says.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Wide coverage in one volume. The contents span sound change, reconstruction, classification, grammatical and semantic change, observation of change and contact, so a course can follow the book's order.
• Data for practice. The book has a separate datasets section of about 18 pages, and the publisher reports many new problems and datasets in this edition.
• Examples from Australia and the Pacific. The publisher's special emphasis on these regions shows in the language names that recur in the text, such as Dyirbal, Fijian, Samoan, Tok Pisin, Bislama and Proto-Polynesian.
• Both traditional and newer methods. The chapters on the comparative method sit beside a separate chapter on computational and statistical methods.

Limitations

• Date. The edition is from 2010; developments in computational phylogenetics since then are not covered.
• Thin on the theory of change. The contents devote separate chapters to methods and to each domain of change but do not include a chapter on theories of why change happens; a student who wants this needs a more theoretical text.
• Uneven chapter sizes. Chapter 3, on notation, and Chapters 4 and 6 are only 10–13 pages, so they are best read together with the neighbouring longer chapters.
• No phonetics primer. The publisher says the needs of undergraduate students of linguistics were kept firmly in mind, but the contents contain no introduction to phonetics, so some phonetic background will help with the sound-change chapters.

Where It Fits in the Course

Among the historical-linguistics books on this site, Crowley and Bowern is a compact methods-oriented textbook. Trask and Millar's Trask's Historical Linguistics is another introductory textbook that explains the types of change and the methods of reconstruction, with examples from every inhabited continent; Aitchison's Language Change: Progress or Decay? is a readable account of how and why languages change that requires no background in linguistics.

For a deeper level, Campbell's Historical Linguistics: An Introduction covers similar topics with more methodological detail and assumes solid phonetics; Ringe and Eska's Historical Linguistics: Toward a Twenty-First Century Reintegration treats change with the tools of modern theoretical linguistics. Hock and Joseph's Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship is another introduction to historical and comparative linguistics, with data from Indo-European and other families.

How to Use This Book

The book is aimed at undergraduate students of linguistics; knowledge of phonetics and phonology, and ideally an introductory linguistics course, will make Chapters 2–5 easier.

A practical plan:

• Core: Chapters 1–9, in order. The comparative method (Chapters 5 and 9) depends on the vocabulary of sound change in Chapters 2–4, and Chapter 6 deals with determining relatedness.
• Next: Chapters 10–12 on change in grammar and meaning, read in the order the chapters are listed.
• Optional by interest: Chapter 8 for those interested in computational classification, Chapters 13–14 for contact and sociolinguistic perspectives, and Chapter 15 for the link to prehistory.
• Practice: do the problems and the datasets alongside each method chapter.