16.1785, Review: Historical Ling/Textbooks: Campbell (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-1785. Mon Jun 06 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.1785, Review: Historical Ling/Textbooks: Campbell (2004)

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What follows is a review or discussion note contributed to our 
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discussion, look for books announced on LINGUIST as "available 
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1)
Date: 06-Jun-2005
From: Peter Öhl < P.Oehl at lingua.uni-frankfurt.de >
Subject: Historical Linguistics (Second Edition) 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 22:46:37
From: Peter Öhl < P.Oehl at lingua.uni-frankfurt.de >
Subject: Historical Linguistics (Second Edition) 
 

AUTHOR: Campbell, Lyle
TITLE: Historical Linguistics, Second Edition
SUBTITLE: An Introduction
PUBLISHER: The MIT Press
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-1778.html


Peter Öhl, Institute for Cognitive Linguistics, University of Frankfurt/ 
Main, Germany 

The content of the second edition of Campbell's introduction to is by 
and large the same as in the first edition. It is a student's textbook 
presenting the major areas of historical linguistics, with emphasis on 
practise and broad empirical information. The book addresses 
students of historical linguistics with little theoretical and philological 
background. If it exceeds the basic introductory level, linguistic 
terminology -- both historical and non-historical -- is mostly explained. 
The topics covered in the book are (by chapter heading):

(1. Introduction)
2. Sound Change (kinds of sound change, including a list and 
examples of the most common changes; relative chronology)
3. Borrowing (lexical borrowing: definition, motivation; a short 
description of phonological and semantic borrowings and of the 
cultural inferences)
4. Analogical change (proportional analogy; levelling, extension; models)
5. The Comparative Method (assumptions of the model -- regularity of 
sound change; a case study: cognates in Finno-Ugric)
6. Linguistic classification (the world's language families; terminology; 
explanation of the subgrouping; glottochronology/ lexicostatistics)
7. Models of language change (discussion of the family tree model 
and wave theory; dialectology; sociolinguistics and language change; 
lexical diffusion)
8. Internal reconstruction (illustrations of the method; limitations; the 
comparative method)
9. Semantic and lexical change (traditional considerations; explaining 
semantic change; production of new words (numerous examples))
10. Syntactic change (mechanisms; generative approaches; 
grammaticalisation; reconstruction)
11. Explaining linguistic change (early theories; internal and external 
causes, explanation and prediction)
12. Areal linguistics (the concept of areal linguistics; examples of 
linguistic areas; how to determine an area; subgrouping; distant 
genetic relationship?)
13. Distant genetic relationships (types of evidence used; chance 
similarities; problems in the methods used)
14. The role of written records (philology; the role of writing; getting 
historical linguistic information for (sic!) written sources (same typo in 
1st ed.))
15. Linguistic prehistory (Indo-European; methods; limitations and 
cautions).

Each topic is illustrated with rich empirical evidence from various 
language families, most commonly Indo-European, Uralic, Mayan and 
Uto-Aztecan. All chapters except 7, 11, 12, 13 & 15 are followed by a 
large number of refined exercises that often cover the topics in detail 
and comprise data from numerous language groups. In comparison to 
the first edition, the empirical basis and the exercises were enriched, 
some tables and maps were replaced and added in favour of 
illustration. The organisation of the chapters has for the most part 
been retained, except that the chapters on syntax and on semantics 
(now 9&10) have been switched.

To make it short: This is still a very good text book for the purposes it 
has been written for. However, those who have found shortcomings in 
the theoretical aspects of historical linguistics in the first edition, will 
still find them here. And those who would have liked to find more 
discussion of methods and data from research on linguistic subfields 
other than phonology and lexicology, will still miss them. Campbell has 
not made many changes in the second edition, which may have been 
his intention: In the main, the presentation of the material has been 
made more transparent, and the empirical and the practical parts have 
been refined and amended. 

Campbell's introduction stands in the long tradition of (morpho-)
phonological comparison of languages and language groups, 
respectively their historical stages. Not much has to be added to the 
chapter on phonological change. The chapters on borrowing and on 
analogy also both rely very much on the role of sound change, they 
present only little data from morphology and syntax. Lexical borrowing 
is presented in its most relevant aspects, though not as concisely and 
systematically as the chapter on sound change. This might be 
attributed to Campbell's intent to not refer to linguistic theories in the 
chapters building on the presentation of empirical data. A little more 
attention could have been paid to different types of loanwords and 
their correlation with cultural inferences, especially as the calques are 
concerned, which he presents on page 81. Instead, he tries to give an 
intuitive explanation of how and why languages borrow from each 
other -- which may in fact meet the interests of the target group better 
than the discussion of theoretical aspects would. 

The textbook definitely has its strength in the presentation of data 
making the classification of languages plausible to students -- even if 
Campbell's approach is rather conservative. His main effort is to be 
concise about the world's language families and their rationale, not 
avoiding to present the challenge of the family tree model by wave 
theory in the chapter about models of linguistic change. Significantly, 
the models he is presenting go back to very early ideas of explaining 
linguistic change. The chapter on analogy -- which is in fact a 
theoretical one -- definitely lacks theoretical elaboration. The ideas of 
analogical change are presented, but much more attention should 
have been paid to the syntagmatic and paradigmatic effects on 
grammatical systems. What is missing in all chapters is the reference 
to more recent models of change, e.g. nativist models as used in 
generative explanations of linguistic change (see below), or recent 
developments in functional grammar that are reflected in the research 
on grammaticalisation. Both, he treats quite superficially in his chapter 
on syntactic change that is, with 28 pages, remarkably short, anyway.

This is in fact the general criticism I have for the whole book: Campbell 
treats syntax only marginally before his chapter 10, and much more 
could be said about morphological changes. Phonology is a major, but 
not the main factor constituting linguistic change and putting 
languages into relationship. It is a common fallacy in linguistic didactics 
that syntax may be deferred to advanced courses. In fact, syntactic 
typology and syntactic change are essential elements of 
understanding historical and comparative linguistics. This is why in my 
view important aspects are missing also in the presentation of 
linguistic reconstruction and linguistic classification (including the 
chapters on genetic relationship and areal linguistics) -- if this 
textbook is meant to be concise.  

On page 283, Campbell states that there is no generally recognised 
approach to the treatment of syntactic change as there is for sound 
change. This statement is a little too suggestive, taking into 
consideration that this is a textbook for students who take their basic 
knowledge and their first impressions about historical linguistics from 
it. Since Campbell does not refer to recent theoretic approaches to 
phonological changes, he makes the reader think that only in syntax, 
there is some heterogeneous research done in more or less isolated 
research communities, whereas everybody in the world agrees that 
the approach to sound change he describes is the only and the right 
one. That Campbell's main interests are phonology and lexicology is 
evident. This could be stated without devaluating the generative 
approach to syntactic change, which he surprisingly treats in this 
chapter (Why didn't he, then, inform the reader about generative 
approaches to phonology, e.g. Kiparsky 1978, 1995b?). 

Quite a lot has happened in diachronic syntax within the last two 
decades. Numerous works on syntactic change could have been 
mentioned, like Lightfoot (1991, 1997), Gelderen (1996), Kiparsky 
(1995a, 1996, 1997), Kroch (1989, 2000), Kroch & Taylor (1997), 
Pintzuk (1991), Pintzuk & al. (2000), Roberts (1992). Instead, 
Campbell discusses approaches to rule-based changes through 
language acquisition, like Klima (1964). What Campbell apparently 
takes as representative for generative models, is nowadays still 
respected, but history. (Note that in the first edition, Campbell gave 
here an example from sound change to demonstrate rule-based 
changes.) Lightfoot's (1979) model, which Campbell criticises on page 
291, has been amended by Lightfoot himself several times. The latest 
generative approach to syntactic change Campbell lists is Lightfoot 
(1991), but its central idea, how to explain grammatical change 
through a change in parameter setting, isn't even mentioned. 

It is quite surprising to find generative explanations reduced to the 
1970's models of rule acquisition in a textbook published in 2004. 
Even Campbell's claim that in the generative view, 'linguistic change in 
general (...) takes place (...) in the transition of grammars from one 
generation to the next', is not justifiable, since most of the modern 
approaches (especially Lightfoot 1991) do in fact not neglect 
performative changes. It is just that the specific topic is the role of 
language acquisition in grammatical change, which is indeed a central 
one. The chapter on syntax could certainly have been done without 
referring to the generative approach in this way. 

It is a pity that this influential textbook on historical linguistics obviously 
treats syntax as a minor subject. Even if one does not adopt the 
generative approach, less theoretical literature on syntactic change 
could have been referred to, like Denison (1993) or Faarlund (1990). 
However, as Campbell himself states on page 283, it is quite 
traditional that syntax is underrepresented in historical linguistic 
textbooks. The plenitude of information about specific areas (mainly 
historical and comparative phonology and lexicology; how to derive 
kinds of relationships between languages) makes this textbook 
nevertheless an essential reading for students of comparative and 
historical linguistics who want to acquire a broad empirical database 
and knowledge about the languages of the world. I would recommend 
it as a reader for corresponding courses, though for classes on topics 
covered by the chapters criticized here, it will be necessary to use 
some additional literature.

REFERENCES

Denison, David (1993). English Historical Syntax: Verbal 
Constructions. Longman. 

Gelderen, Elly van (1996). The Rise of Functional Categories. John 
Benjamins.

Faarlund, Jan T. (1990). Syntactic Change: Toward a Theory of 
Historical Syntax. Mouton de Gruyter.

Kemenade, Ans van & Nigel Vincent (eds.). Parameters of 
Morphosyntactic Change. Cambridge University Press.

Kiparsky, Paul (1978). "Rule Reordering." In Philip Baldi & Ronald N. 
Werth (eds.). Readings in Historical Phonology: Chapters in the 
Theory of Sound Change. Pennsylvania State University Press. 218-
35.

Kiparsky, Paul (1995a).  "Indo-European origins of Proto Germanic 
syntax." In: Adrian Battye, & Ian Roberts (eds.). Clause Structure and 
Language Change, pp. 140-169. Oxford University Press.

Kiparsky, Paul (1995b). "The Phonological Basis of Sound Change." 
In: John Goldsmith (ed.). The Handbook of Phonological Theory, pp. 
640-670. Blackwell Publishing.

Kiparsky, Paul (1996). "The shift to head-initial VP in Germanic". In: 
Höskuldur Thráinsson (ed.) Studies in comparative Germanic syntax. 
Papers from the 9th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop, 
Harvard University, Jan. 1994. Trends in Linguistics/ Studies and 
Monographs 83. Kluwer. 

Kiparsky, Paul (1997). "The rise of positional licensing." In: Kemenade 
& Vincent (eds.). 460-94.

Klima, Edward (1964). "Relatedness between grammatical systems." 
Language 40, 1-20.

Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor (1997). "Verb movement in Old and 
Middle English: Dialect variation and language contact." In: Kemenade 
& Vincent (eds.). 297-325.

Kroch, Anthony (1989). "Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language 
change." Journal of Language Variation and Change 1.3.: 199-244.

Kroch, Anthony (2000) "Syntactic change." In: Mark Baltin & 
Christopher Collins (eds.). The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic 
Theory, pp. 629-739. Blackwell Publishing.

Lightfoot, David (1979). Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge 
University Press.

Lightfoot, David (1991). How to Set Parameters. Arguments from 
Language Change. MIT Press.

Lightfoot, David (1997). "Shifting triggers and diachronic reanalyses." 
In: Kemenade & Vincent (eds). 253-272.

Pintzuk, Susan (1991) Phrase structures in competition: Variation and 
change in Old English word order. PhD. Dissertation, Univ. of 
Pennsylvania.

Pintzuk, Susan & al. (2000). Diachronic Syntax: Models and 
Mechanisms. Oxford University Press. 

Roberts, Ian (1992) Verbs and Diachronic Syntax: A Comparative 
History of English and French. Kluwer. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I studied German and English Philology and some Indo-European 
Linguistics at the University of Freiburg, Germany. I was also trained 
in historical linguistics and comparative syntax at the Universities of 
Massachusetts at Amherst (USA) and Stuttgart (Germany). I have 
taught courses on historical linguistics at the universities of Stuttgart 
and Frankfurt (Germany). Currently, I am researcher in a project 
(generative approach) on the role of functional projections in 
processes of grammaticalisation and syntactic change, specialising on 
the diachrony of verbal inflection and of hypotaxis.





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