Trask's Historical Linguistics

Citation

Trask, R. L., & Millar, R. M. (2023). Trask's Historical Linguistics (4th ed., edited by Robert McColl Millar). Routledge.

Chapter Summary

R. L. (Larry) Trask's textbook first appeared in 1996; later editions have been revised by Robert McColl Millar, who edited this fourth edition (2023, about 400 pages) after Trask's death. It has twelve chapters and an appendix giving the Swadesh 200-word list. Every chapter ends with a case study, further reading and exercises. The preface for teachers describes the plan: after the opening chapter, the next chapters cover phonological, morphological and syntactic change; Chapter 7 turns to the consequences of change in dialects and language families; Chapters 8–9 teach reconstruction; Chapters 10–11 deal with sociolinguistic issues; and Chapter 12 takes up language and prehistory.

Chapter 1: The fact of language change

The book opens with the controversy over irregardless, compares older and present-day English (including a passage from As You Like It used in the exercises), and discusses attitudes to change and its inevitability. The case study is on the phrase kind regards.

Chapter 2: Lexical and semantic change

Borrowing and the phonological and morphological treatment of loans, the formation of new words (including folk etymology, as in bridegroom), and change in word meaning, with a case study of nice. The exercises send students to an etymological dictionary.

Chapter 3: Phonological change 1: Change in pronunciation

The phonetic basis of sound change and its main types: assimilation and dissimilation, lenition and fortition, addition and removal of phonetic features, vowel and syllable-structure changes, and whole-segment processes. A first look at the regularity of sound change ends the chapter, with a case study on Germanic */xw/ in present-day dialects.

Chapter 4: Phonological change II: Change in phonological systems

From changes in sequences of sounds to changes in systems: conditioning and rephonologization, phonological space and chain shifts such as the English Great Vowel Shift. The case study treats Grimm's Law and Verner's Law.

Chapter 5: Morphological change

Reanalysis, analogy and levelling, proposed universal principles of analogy, morphologization (including of phonological rules) and change in morphological type. The case study traces the English definite article from the demonstrative paradigm; exercises use Old English and other early Germanic data.

Chapter 6: Syntactic change

Reanalysis of surface structure, shift of markedness, grammaticalization, typological harmony and syntactic change as the restructuring of grammars, with a case study on the rise of ergativity and data from languages such as the Carib language Panare.

Chapter 7: Relatedness between languages

The consequences of change: the origin of dialects, dialect geography, the tree and wave models, and a survey of the language families of the world. The case study, "A Martian's view on the Germanic language family", asks how the family would be reconstructed without written records.

Chapter 8: The comparative method

The book's methodological core: systematic correspondences and comparative reconstruction, worked step by step through Romance data, then pitfalls and limitations, the Neogrammarian Hypothesis, semantic reconstruction, the use of typology and universals, reconstructing grammar and the reality of proto-languages. The case study is titled "A reconstruction too far?".

Chapter 9: Internal Reconstruction

The internal method, alternations as evidence for earlier forms, and internal reconstruction of grammar and lexicon, with the laryngeal theory of Proto-Indo-European as the case study.

Chapter 10: The origin and propagation of change

The Saussurean paradox (how a language can change while remaining usable), variation and social stratification, variation as the vehicle of change, lexical diffusion, which challenges the Neogrammarian view of Chapter 8, and near-mergers. The case study is on historical sociolinguistics.

Chapter 11: Social and historical pressures upon language

Language contact, linguistic areas, the birth of pidgins and creoles (with Tok Pisin and the debate over the origins of African American Vernacular English), language planning and language death. The case study follows the genesis of American and New Zealand English.

Chapter 12: Language and pre-history

Linguistic palaeontology and the Indo-European homeland, links with archaeology, and statistical methods such as glottochronology. The case study examines Greenberg's mass comparison, part of the book's discussion of very remote relationships.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2: Change and the lexicon

• Inevitability of change: all living languages change, whatever speakers think of it.
• Borrowing and nativization: loans adapted to the phonology and morphology of the borrowing language.
• Folk etymology: reshaping an opaque word into something that looks more transparent.

Chapters 3–6: Types of change

• Lenition and fortition: weakening and strengthening of consonants.
• Chain shift: linked movements of sounds within the phonological space.
• Analogy and levelling: reshaping forms on the model of others, often reducing irregularity.
• Grammaticalization: lexical items developing into grammatical ones.

Chapters 7–9: Relationship and reconstruction

• Tree model and wave model: two ways of picturing how languages and dialects diverge and influence one another.
• Systematic correspondences: regular sound matches among related languages, the basis of the comparative method.
• Internal reconstruction: recovering earlier forms from alternations within one language.

Chapters 10–12: Society and prehistory

• Saussurean paradox: how a language changes while staying usable for its speakers.
• Lexical diffusion: change spreading word by word rather than all at once.
• Pidgin and creole: contact languages and their development into native languages.
• Linguistic palaeontology and mass comparison: using vocabulary to infer prehistoric cultures, and a controversial shortcut for long-range classification.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A full introductory course with exercises. The preface for teachers says the book is designed for a ten- or fifteen-week course for students meeting the subject for the first time. Every chapter has a case study, further reading and exercises, from testing technical terms (Exercise 3.1) to reconstruction from data sets.
• Familiar data first, then wide coverage. English data are used wherever possible in the early chapters so that students can relate the material to their own experience, and the book draws on languages from all six inhabited continents and the Pacific; the ancient Indo-European languages figure less prominently than in some textbooks.
• Method taught by doing. Chapters 8–9 work through comparative and internal reconstruction step by step, and Chapter 12 explains why statistical shortcuts and mass comparison are controversial.
• An updated edition. The publisher lists a thorough reworking of morphological and syntactic change (including grammaticalization), new material on "folk" historical linguistics, expanded discussion of contact, historical sociolinguistics, language planning and creole genesis, and updated support material with essay questions. Alexander Bergs (Osnabrück) and Jeremy J. Smith (Glasgow), quoted by the publisher, both welcome Millar's revision.

Limitations

• Some linguistics is assumed. The preface states that students need some background in descriptive linguistics, specifically some acquaintance with phonetics and the classical phoneme concept. No contemporary phonological or syntactic theory is presupposed, but readers with no linguistics at all should take a phonetics introduction first, since Chapters 3–4 and 8–9 depend on it.
• Older layers of text. The book has been revised by a second author since the first edition, and some framing text has not kept pace: the preface for teachers, after describing Chapter 12, refers to a further "final chapter" that the twelve-chapter contents do not include, and the publisher's online contents skip a section number in Chapter 7.
• Mixed signals on level. The preface addresses first-time students, while the publisher's description calls the book essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the main introductory textbook on the historical linguistics list. Aitchison's Language Change: Progress or Decay? is a shorter, non-technical essay on how and why languages change, strongest on change in progress and its social spread; read it first or alongside Trask's Chapters 1 and 10–11, and use Trask for the methods and exercises Aitchison does not provide.

Crowley and Bowern's An Introduction to Historical Linguistics covers similar ground with special emphasis on the languages of Australia and the Pacific and makes a good second source of problems. Hock and Joseph's Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship is a larger general introduction with much Indo-European material. Campbell's Historical Linguistics is the step up in methodological depth after Trask, and Ringe and Eska's Historical Linguistics connects change with formal theory and acquisition for students who already have the basics.

How to Use This Book

The book suits undergraduates in linguistics, English language or modern languages taking a first course in historical linguistics, and beginning postgraduates who need a grounding. Before starting, be able to read IPA transcription and to distinguish phonemes from allophones; a first-year phonetics and phonology course is enough.

• Core: Chapters 1–4 and 7–9. They give the types of sound change, the idea of language families and the two reconstruction methods. Do the exercises in Chapters 8–9 in full; reconstruction is learned by practice.
• Next: Chapters 5–6 on morphological and syntactic change, and Chapter 10 on variation and the spread of change.
• By interest: Chapter 11 for contact, creoles and language death; Chapter 12 for prehistory and long-range comparison, best read after Chapter 8.

Read the case study at the end of each chapter as a worked example of the chapter's ideas, and use the further reading lists, which the authors say are mostly in English and readable, to follow up topics. Keep a good etymological dictionary at hand, as the opening "To the reader" section advises, and use the publisher's support material for essay questions.