This study resurrects the genre of Wortstudien contributions or lexilogus treatments, the core of historical lexical semantics. Such studies used to be quite popular, and interest in lexical matters is again rising. The word family around the Indo-European root *aǵ- ‘drive’ is placed against its… read more
In any course of historical and comparative linguistics there will be students of different language backgrounds, different levels of linguistic training, and different theoretical orientation. This textbook attempts to mitigate the problems raised by this heterogeneity in a number of ways. Since… read more
This basic bibliography of analogy aims to be a useful tool for linguistic research. The compilers have emphasized the years from 1868 onwards, starting with Scherer’s statement, but a few important premonitory works have been included as well. read more
Interest in word-meaning is on the increase among mainstream linguists again after a half-century of neglect. During this interval progress in phonology and syntax was great, but further progress in these sub-disciplines will remain blocked until it is recognized that the prime functional unit of… read more
SUMMARY Against the dominating position in theoretical linguistics that it is one of the natural sciences falling under covering (deductive-nomological) laws, it is argued here that linguistics is rather one of the so-called human sciences. It is further shown that the pattern explanation developed… read more
SUMMARY It is maintained that the basic semiotic concepts of icon and index in the Peircean sense give the best tools for both describing and explaining change. The notion of iconic index is used to explicate assimilation, morphophonemics, sociolectal pronunciation variation, grammatical agreement,… read more
