Consonant Change in English Worldwide: Synchrony Meets Diachrony

by Daniel Schreier

Book Overview

Applying insights from variationist linguistics to historical change mechanisms that have affected the consonantal system of English, Daniel Schreier reports findings from a historical corpus-based study on the reduction of particular consonant clusters and compares them with similar processes in synchronic varieties, thus defining consonantal change as a phenomenon involving psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, phonological theory and contact linguistics. Moreover, he weighs the impact of external and internal effects on causation, examining data from a total of 15 varieties with different time depths and social histories.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1349546844
• ISBN13: 9781349546848
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"