Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Table of Contents; Preface; How to use this book; Guide to phonetic symbols; Acknowledgements; 1 Introduction; 1.1 Background to this book; 1.2 Observing language change; 1.3 Predictions from observations; 1.4 Plan of campaign; Reading and References; Notes for more advanced students; Exercises; 2 Lexical change; 2.1 Introduction; 2.2 Changes in vocabulary sources and the makeup of words; 2.3 Use of the suffix -ee; Reading and References; Notes; Exercises; 3 Grammatical change; 3.1 A corpus; 3.2 Comparative and superlative marking
3.3 Concord with collective nouns3.4 Relative clauses; 3.5 Methodological observations; Reading and References; Notes; 4 Sound change; 4.1 Introduction; 4.2 Change of stress; 4.3 Yod-dropping; 4.4 Vowel change; 4.5 Methodological observations; Reading and References; Notes; Exercises; Exercises; 5 Other changes; 5.1 Punctuation and formal aspects of writing; 5.2 Spelling; 5.3 Modes of address; 5.4 Engineered change; 5.5 Methodological observations; Reading and References; Notes; Exercises; 6 Theoretical perspective; 6.1 Introduction; 6.2 The constraints problem; 6.3 The transition problem
6.4 The embedding problem6.5 The evaluation problem; 6.6 The actuation problem; 6.7 Limitations and prospect; Reading and References; Notes; Suggested answers to exercises; References; General works; Lexica; Sources of data; Index
Summary
Examines the ways language has changed in the twentieth century. It concentrates on standard English and takes a historical rather than sociolinguistic view of the changes which have occurred
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-195) and index
