Analogy and Morphological Change

How do learners and speakers make sense of their language and make their language make sense. Is it dived or dove? Dwarfs or dwarves? If the best students aced the test, did the pretty good students beece it? You've probably often pondered such questions yourself, but did you know that similar questions have inspired some of the most important advances in our understanding not only of how languages change but also of how children acquire grammar and how the human mind works? This book is designed to help readers make sense of morphological change and, more generally, of the concept of analogy and its role in language and in human cognition. With a critical look at the past 150 years of linguistic work on analogical change, David Fertig brings clarity to a field rife with terminological and theoretical confusion.

Author: David L. Fertig
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 06/27/2013
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.10w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9780748646210

About the Author

David L. Fertig David Fertig is Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). He is the author of Morphological Change Up Close (Niemeyer, 2000) and is currently working with several colleagues on a new English translation with commentary of major chapters from Hermann Paul's Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. He lives in Amherst, NY with his wife and the youngest of their three children.