Language Change

"Language Change" is a workbook. From the beginning the reader is presented with interesting data on change in English and in other languages, and is invited to consider these data carefully and to draw suitable conclusions. Each unit consists of a brief introduction to a particular topic followed by a set of exercises expanding the ideas introduced. Among the topics covered are the various types of language change, attitudes to language change, consequences of language change and methods for working backward to reconstruct historical developments. R. L. Trask also covers the most dramatic types of change: the birth and death of languages.