Historical Linguistics: An Introduction

by Lyle Campbell

This accessible, hands-on textbook not only introduces students to the important topics in historical linguistics but also shows them how to apply the methods described and how to think about the issues. Abundant examples and exercises allow students to focus on how to do historical linguistics. The book is distinctive for its integration of the standard topics with others now considered important to the field, including syntactic change, grammaticalization, sociolinguistic contributions to linguistic change, distant genetic relationships, areal linguistics, and linguistic prehistory. It also offers a defense of the family tree model, a response to recent claims on lexical diffusion/frequency, and a section on why languages diversify and spread. Examples are taken from a broad range of languages; those from the more familiar English, French, German, and Spanish make the topics more accessible, while those from non-Indo-European languages show the depth and range of the concepts they illustrate.

Genres: Linguistics, Language, Nonfiction, History, Textbooks, School, Philosophy

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Lyle Richard Campbell is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in general. Campbell is professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyle Campbell's Historical Linguistics: An Introduction is a textbook initiating students into the study of language change. Already published in several editions, the book is quite impressive and I highly recommend it to anyone entering the field.

Campbell begins by discussing three types of change, that of sounds, that of the lexicon in borrowing, and analogical change. After making students aware of these diachronic developments, he then presents the comparative method and the technique of proto-language reconstruction. After showing how regular correspondences indicate development from a common source, Campbell discusses the classification of languages and models of linguistic change. For me, the most exciting chapter is that on internal reconstruction, where Campbell gives a number of examples (not just the usual one of PIE ablaut). The author then covers three others types of change, semantic, lexical, and syntactic. A chapter on areal linguistics familiarises the reader with dialectology, and one on distant genetic relationships introduces theories like Nostratic. Finally, discussion of philology and a chapter on reconstruction of proto-cultures and the hunting of Urheimats closes the book.

The finest aspect of this book is the great variety of languages from which Campbell draws his examples. Many textbooks, such as that of Lehmann, limit their focus mostly to Indo-European, but Campbell also gives attention to Finno-Ugric, Polynesian languages, Semitic, and many indigenous American languages, especially the Mayan languages which the authors seems expert in. In fact, the lack of sticking just to Indo-European makes this a very useful text for budding Indo-Europeanists, because most of the other language family reconstructions make use of typology, a technique only now beginning to be applied to IE. I can make few complaints about the work, though some aspects of the IE reconstruction he uses may be superseded.

This is a real textbook, exercises are abudant and really challenge the student to apply all he has learned. The author does assume students already have some understanding of phonology and general linguistic terminology.

If you are interested in the general field of historical linguistics and have some prior training in linguistics, Campbell's textbook is one of the best primers available and highly worth seeking out.

[Koen Crolla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very comprehensive and accessible introduction to the field. The bulk of the book is concerned with how languages change and how to reconstruct proto-languages using the comparative method, and while Campbell was clearly paid by the word for those sections, they lay everything out very cleanly and using a very large amount of examples, not just from Indo-European languages, as is most common, but also from Uralic and various indigenous American ones (Campbell's area of interest). The exercises included are meaningful but also well within the ability of students without access to a professor with an answer key to tackle.
As you get away from those chapters and into the ones trying to deal with implications and interpretations, things do get more muddled and less structured, and when adjacent fields and other methods of historical linguistics are brought in, the book veers into strong opinions. Those opinions seem to me to be mostly sound and well argued, but the last chapter, Quantitative approaches to historical linguistics, is the book's weakest—Campbell quite convincingly argues against glottochronology and ASJP, but when it comes to other quantitative methods, his objections are much sloppier and occasionally obviously inadequate. I don't doubt that mathwashing is as much of a problem in historical linguistics as it is in other academic fields, but Campbell barely makes that case—then again, that's not really the point of the book or even the chapter.
On the whole, though, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction is an excellent resource for both aspiring academic linguists and interested laypersons.

[Mikael Lind · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with this book is that it is too stodgy and almost impossible to read from a to b without losing interest along the way. It works as a book of reference for anyone interested in the field, but for something more interesting and thought-provoking I recommend Mark Hale's book Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method.

[Paul G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute must-read. Campbell is very straightforward and thorough, and even a cursory read of this textbook is a very solid grounding in the topic of historical linguistics. Not only are the basic elements of theory and method explained well and with copious examples and helpful exercises, but also Campbell’s chapters on hot topics such as large-scale proposals of families (think Altaic and Nostratic) and quantitative methods being applied to historical linguistics are absolutely superb crash courses in the dangers and controversies that surround these sometimes murky debates. My only complaint is that considering I read the fourth edition, there did seem to be quite a few little typos, which were odd, but never impaired the content or style.

[Axel Leplae · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Koffie komt van het Turkse 'kahveh', wat dan weer van het Arabische 'qahwah' komt. Voor de rest te weinig prentjes.
Grts

[Mikhael Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good book, only thing to complain about is the dearth of info on Afro-Asiatic and several East Asian languages/families. Pretty blunt critiques against computational approaches to the field, but hey, I get it. Maybe one day ChatGPT will be able to autosort all languages, but until then, humans will have to keep thinking.

[Jing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up as an intro book--it's really a text book, although one full of amazing facts I didn't know before. I chugged my way through this thing one incomprehensible chapter at a time, skipping the exercises and allowing my eyes to glaze over when the vocabs got too hard, but I enjoyed the journey and the lovely little bits and pieces about the study of linguistics to better understand human history. A great book.

[Stephen Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little scattered in terms of included subjects/material, but a quality book on the subject nonetheless.

[M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly a very nicely illustrated edition for those who are introducing themselves in the uncanny world of the historical linguistics. I would've voted it 5 stars if it wasn't because about 30-40% of the book focuses on matters which are quite complex as well as unimportant and these sections could've been exploited more in order to provide a richer insight in language contact or lexical change, for example.

PS: it is full of examples of the Spanish language in almost every area that the book covers, so it is perhaps a highly recommended text for Spaniards or for those interested in Hispanic philology/linguistics, etc.

[Jenis Rumao · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent course book for an introduction to Historical Linguistics. Has a wide range of examples of languages from different language families. Whether or not 2 languages are related to each other and if a language can be called the mother of all languages were some questions that were shed light upon in the discussions that ensued after reading Bynon's historical linguistics. This book by Lyle helps support the ideas of the proto-language because of the copious concepts and examples provided.

[Dougald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy reading about languages, so that is probably the reason for the high rating for this book. It covers various topics related to thinking about linguistics historically. Many of them are very fascinating. Some, like the last chapter, are not so much.

[Typhon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone with training in phonetics and also perhaps linguistic morphology. To people who fulfill this requirement this book is a masterpiece of a clear and synthetic introduction to Historical Linguistics and one of my favourite linguistics books, period.

[Shaun · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent introduction to the topic of historical linguistics.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dense, but valuable for the extensive (and delightful!) problem sets. One of the handful of textbooks I'm actually keeping after graduating.

[KC · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by my professors and it lived up to that recommendation. I was reading it alongside another on the same subject and both were very informative.

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good textbook

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful for my English Change and Variation class

[Jon Gauthier · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely detailed introduction to historical linguistics. Every concept is accompanied by several in-depth examples, some of which are almost excessively wrought out. (Get ready for page-long lists of English place name suffixes and three pages' worth of Japanese loanwords.)

This text goes much further than Crowley's, with far more examples of phonological / grammatical change and entire sections dedicated to concepts unacknowledged by Crowley (chain shifts, vowel lowering / raising, involved descriptions of syntactic change). I wish I had read this one first!

[André · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one offers a great overview and introduction of historical linguistics, how to do it and where the problems are. The explanations are clear and the exercises are, well, quite difficult. They work nicely as exercises to be solved in class when tutoring.

[Madeleine]

Another book that I started eons ago and got too distracted to pick up again. I am so coming back to this one when the time's right.

[Megan]

Historical Linguistics: An Introduction by Lyle Campbell (1999)

[hh · Rating 3 out of 5]

good book, somewhere in between intro level and intermediate. some background in linguistics is extremely helpful.

[Jonathan Weinand · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic book. I am terribly fond of linguistics, but I feel that this was a very good book for people who aren't necessarily well-versed. At the same time, it is thorough and well-done.

[Riya · Rating 2 out of 5]

its a usefull book

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic. Interesting, indescribably informative, and as super a reference book for essays as it was a (rather unusual) summer read.

[Confucius · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is one of the best works on historical linguistics.

[jac · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy entertaining introductory read.

[Julianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this as the textbook for an undergraduate historical linguistics course. Excellent in all respects.

[Juliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful if you are interested in Mayan languages in particular. The comparative method and reconstruction exercises are really challenging.