Historical Linguistics: An Introduction

I'm very happy with this seller. The book arrived earlier than prescribed and in wonderful condition as promised. It was well packacked and in great shape.

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS: An Introduction is a textbook for university undergraduates written by Winfred Lehmann, one of the most illustrious Indo-Europeanists of the 20th century and an engaging writer. It is a real textbook, not just a dry handbook, for it is slow and friendly, and there are exercises at the end of each section to help the student apply what he has just learned. As Lehmann is an Indo-Europeanist, and most students reading this will be Westerners (although I ironically bought my copy in Beijing) the language family used for most examples is Indo-European. However, other families, such as Afro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan, are described. If it's Winfred Lehmann writing the book, one can expect especial focus on several matters often given lesser attention by his peers in the field. Lehmann believes students should have not only an idea of what is believed about matters today, but that they should also understand the breakthroughs and personalities of the last two centuries. As a result, there is an ample history of historical linguistic study. Lehmann was also one of the first Westerners to appreciate the ties made by Soviet scholars between historical linguistics and typology, and so typological classification is covered as a necessary part of reaching a finer historical reconstruction. And finally, as Lehmann looked greatly at PIE syntax when most other people were concerned with other matters of reconstruction, there's a detailed chapter on syntactical change. Lehmann's textbook is not perfect. Some things are idiosyncratic, such as his suggestion that the Praenestine Fibula inscription is authentic in spite of majority opinion against it. It also has competition for students planning on pursuing historical linguistics with Indo-European. If you already have a fairly decent idea of historicaly linguistics and are itching to discover the history of comparative Indo-European linguistics, you might as well go straight to Lehmann's THEORETICAL BASES OF INDO-EUROPEAN LINGUISTICS. If you still don't know much about historical linguistics but want to know what is believed right now in IE studies, there's also Fortson's INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE. Beginning students in linguistics need all the materials they can get. Lehmann's HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS is a book worth seeking out, among others.