RE: "Explaining Language Change"

From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Sun Feb 25 2001 - 13:51:12 GMT

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From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: "Explaining Language Change"
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 08:51:12 -0500
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    Thanks for the recommendation, Bill. I'll order it.

    - Lawrence

    -----Original Message-----
    From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
    Of William Benzon
    Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 6:43 AM
    To: Memetics Discussion List
    Cc: Bill Croft
    Subject: FW: "Explaining Language Change"

    Yo memeticists -- I figure this book should be of interest to you -- Bill B

    ----------
    From: Bill Croft <w.croft@man.ac.uk>
    Reply-To: Bill Croft <w.croft@man.ac.uk>
    Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 17:00:11 -0800 ( PST)
    To: cogling@ucsd.edu
    Subject: "Explaining Language Change"

    I would like to announce that my book "Explaining Language
    Change" is finally available outside the UK---it is now listed as
    available at a major Internet bookseller, listed at US$22
    paperback (the UK price is 19.99 pounds).

    I am sending this announcement because the publisher (Longman)
    was bought up by Pearson, who terminated linguistics
    publication, is not marketing their recent linguistics books, and
    has not answered correspondence.

    I have appended the jacket description of the book. My apologies
    to those who receive multiple copies of this announcement.

    Bill Croft

    "Explaining Language Change"
    William Croft, University of Manchester
    ISBN 0-582-35677-6 (paperback), June 2000. Pp. xvi, 287.

    Ever since the origins of both linguistics and evolutionary
    biology in the 19th century, scholars have noted the similarity
    between biological evolution and language change. Yet until
    recently neither linguists nor biologists have developed a model
    of evolution general enough to apply across the two fields. Even
    in linguistics, the field is split between the historical
    linguists who study change in language structure, and the
    sociolinguists who study social variation in the speech
    community.

    "Explaining language change" represents the first thoroughly
    worked out framework for language evolution, building on the
    pioneering ideas of Richard Dawkins and David Hull in biology
    and philosophy of science. Its central thesis is that the locus
    of language change is the utterance in social intercourse.
    Linguistic innovations emerge from the remarkable complexity of
    communication in social interaction. Once innovations occur,
    they are propagated through the equally complex social
    structures of the speech communities we participate in.

    "Explaining language change" provides a framework for assessing
    current theories of language change, and advances new ideas
    about grammatical reanalysis, conventional and nonconventional
    use of language, the structure of speech communities, language
    mixing, and the notion of "progress" in language change.
    "Explaining language change" reintegrates sociolinguistics and
    historical linguistics, weaving together research on grammatical
    change, pragmatics, social variation, language contact and
    genetic linguistics.

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    This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
    Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
    For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
    see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

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