Historical Linguistics 1997 : Selected Papers From the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Düsseldorf, 10–17 August 1997

This volume presents a selection from the papers given at the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. It offers a window on the current state of the art in historical linguistics: the papers cover a wide range of different languages, different language families, and different approaches to the study of linguistic change, ranging from optimality theory, theories of grammaticalization and the invisible hand, treatments of language contact and creolization to the linguistic consequences of political correctness. Among the languages under discussion are Akkadian, Catalan, Dutch, Finnish, Japanese, Sranan, Western Malayo-Polynesian, Yiddish, and a variety of Romance and Native American languages. These selected papers on historical linguistics cover a variety of languages, language families, and approaches to the study of language change, ranging from optimality theory to the linguistic consequences of political correctness. Two papers on Japanese, and three on Yiddish, are included.