Evolutionary Phonology (Part 1 of 3)

Today's reading is Evolutionary Phonology by Juliette Blevins. ISBN: 0521804280

Blackwell Companion to Phonology, Vol II: Chapter 57: Quantity-sensitivity

My notes on Blackwell Companion to Phonology, Vol II: Chapter 57: Quantity-sensitivity by Draga Zec.

The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, Volume I: Chapter 1: Underlying Representations

We take a major diversion from 'Vowels and Consonants' to look at The Blackwell Companion to Phonology.

Since the purpose of these blogs posts is partly to communicate some linguistics to a interested but non-specialist audience, that introductory book was a good place to be. Alas, the other purpose was to provide incentives to get through my reading list, and that book is sufficiently introductory that writing each summary post took longer than reading the chapter! Now, we move onto something a little more dense, and I will need my note-taking...

(Apologies for any Atlantic spelling that follows - the book is in American English, and I appear to be randomly alternating between copying out quotes verbatim, and replacing the spelling with my own...)

Optimality theory

Today, an introduction to Optimality Theory, taken from Optimality Theory: A Reader, edited by John McCarthy.

A survey of word accentual patterns in the languages of the world

The next few months' reading is A survey of word accentual patterns in the languages of the world edited by Harry van der Hulst, Rob Goedemans and Ellen van Zanten. ISBN: 9783110196313

I have had an interesting voyage to get to this book, not least because I kept assuming it had the word 'stress' somewhere in the title. It is the Book of the Database: the StressTyp database, to be precise. (You see why I thought the title contained the words "Typological survey of stress".)

I do not intend to cover all 10 chapters on different language families this week, but I expect I will keep coming back to it. This week, we look at Chapter 1, an overview of word accents.

Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Part 4 of 4)

Part 4 of my notes on Historical Linguistics: An introduction by Lyle Campbell. ISBN: 9780262531597  (Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here.)

Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Part 3 of 4)

Part 3 of my notes on Historical Linguistics: An introduction by Lyle Campbell. ISBN: 9780262531597  (Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here. Read Part 4 here.)

Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Part 2 of 4)

Part 2 of my notes on Historical Linguistics: An introduction by Lyle Campbell. ISBN: 9780262531597  (Read Part 1 here. Read Part 3 here, Part 4 here.)

Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Part 1 of 4)

This week's reading is Historical Linguistics: An introduction by Lyle Campbell. ISBN: 9780262531597  (Read Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here.)

Historical linguistics is basically what everyone thinks linguists do. Actually, that's not quite true. People who have heard of linguistics as a field of study, think that it involves historical linguistics. Most people, on hearing "I'm a linguist", immediately ask which languages you speak. Which, let's be fair, is a valid question even when linguist means studier-of-languages, not student-of-languages; we are perhaps more likely than the average English speaker to be interested in other languages.

However! There is an idea that the study of language involves figuring out where words come from, how languages are related to one another, and how they've changed. This is, indeed, what linguistics historically involved, though it is no longer the exclusive, or even main, field of study. But it is very interesting, and more accessible than any other facet of the subject - except perhaps infant language acquisition.

Here are my notes on the first three chapters of the book.