Prologue: Social Correlates of Linguistic Structures 1: Sociolinguistic Typology and the Speed of Change 2: Complexification, Simplification, and Two Types of Contact 3: Isolation and Complexification 4: Mechanisms of Complexification 5: Contact and Isolation in Phonology 6: Mature Phenomena and Societies of Intimates Epilogue: On the Future of Linguistic Complexity Bibliography Index
Peter Trudgill is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Agder, Norway. He has held Chairs in Linguistics at the Universities of Reading, Essex, Lausanne, and Fribourg (where he is now Emeritus). He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University and Honorary Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of East Anglia. His many books include Sociolinguistics: an Introduction to Language and Society (Penguin, 1974, 4th edn 2000), On Dialect (Blackwell, 1983), Dialects in Contact (Blackwell, 1986), The Dialects of England (Blackwell 1990, 2nd end 1999), New-Dialect Formation: on the Inevitability of Colonial Englishes (Edinburgh, 2004), and Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics: Stories of Colonisation and Contact (CUP 2010).
this thought-provoking work ... offers a fresh and compelling
reason for linguists to focus on less commonly studied endangered
languages. We therefore recommend this stimulating book to anyone
interested in exploring possible connections between
sociolinguistcs, language change, and typology. * James N. Stanford
and Timothy J. Pulju, Studies in Language *
An exciting book, multi-faceted and lucid, a book that can not only
be recommended to researchers on linguistic change and historical
sociolinguistics but also to advanced students in the field. *
Juerg Schwyter, Neuphilologische Mitteilunge *
a brisk and informative introduction to a way of thinking about
language that has profound implications for analysis of language
diachrony, acquisition, contact, and spread - and of course, given
those areas, creolization. * Brian McWhorter, Revista de Crioulos
de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola *
This bold new book, by one of the fields leading sociolinguists,
outlines the need for a new intellectual project at the heart of
our discipline, emphasising the crucial role of the small
face-to-face societies that have shaped most of human history in
generating the outer reaches of linguistic complexity. * Nicholas
Evans, Professor of Linguistics, College of Asia and the Pacific,
Australian National University *
This focussed and important work shows that degree of contact, the
size of the community of speakers, and coherence within that
community are all important factors in the degree to which
languages become structurally simpler (losing agreement and gender
for example) or more complex. This is a must-read for anyone
interested in language change. * Gary Miller, author of Language
Change and Linguistic Theory *
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