Robert Lawrence Trask Livres

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 andlanguage families), and methods in historical linguistics. Later chapters deal with sociolinguistic aspects of change, language contact, birth and death of languages, language and prehistory, and finally the issue of very remote relations.

Introducing Linguistics presents a summary of the history of linguistics, from Aristotle to Chomsky, and provides a review of the most recent and dramatic advances in the field, such as first language acquisition by children, language in the brain, sign languages, language change and linguistic prehistory, men's and women's language, language engineering and the universal properties of languages.