This book seeks to answer the questions: why do grammars change, and why is the rate of such change so variable? A principal focus is on changes in English between the Anglo-Saxon and early modern periods. The author frames his analysis in a comparative framework with extended discussions of language change in a wide range of other Indo-European languages. He deploys Chomsky's minimalist framework in a fruitful marriage of comparative and theoretical linguistics within an argument that will be accessible to practitioners in both fields.

The emergence of Modern Hebrew as a spoken language constitutes a unique event in modern history: a language which for generations only existed in the written mode underwent a process popularly called “revival”, acquiring native speakers and becoming a language spoken for everyday use. Despite the attention it has drawn, this particular case of language-shift, which differs from the better-documented cases of creoles and mixed languages, has not been discussed within the framework of the literature on contact-induced change. The linguistic properties of the process have not been systematically studied, and the status of the emergent language as a (dis)continuous stage of its historical sources has not been evaluated in the context of other known cases of language shift. The present collection presents detailed case studies of the syntactic evolution of Modern Hebrew, alongside general theoretical discussion, with the aim of bringing the case of Hebrew to the attention of language-contact scholars, while bringing the insights of the literature on language contact to help shed light on the case of Hebrew.

Where is the locus of language variation? In the grammar, outside the grammar or somewhere in between? Taking up the debate between system- and usage-based approaches, this volume provides new discussions of fundamental issues of language variation. It includes several highly insightful theoretical contributions as well as innovative empirical studies considering different types of data, the role of priming in language change and rare phenomena.

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary English Pronunciation provides a comprehensive survey of this field covering both theoretical and practical perspectives on pronunciation. In 35 chapters contributed by leading scholars from around the world, this Handbook examines: linguistic and historical background of sound systems and theoretical issues linked to sound changes; pronunciation acquisition and factors related to speech production; pronunciation research and applications to second language pronunciation; the link between pronunciation and other language skills including perception and other socio-cultural factors; pronunciation and its relation to World Englishes. The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary English Pronunciation will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in pronunciation.

This edited volume, based on papers presented at the 2017 Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics (GURT), approaches the study of language variation from a variety of angles. Language variation research asks broad questions such as, "Why are languages' grammatical structures different from one another?" as well as more specific word-level questions such as, "Why are words that are pronounced differently still recognized to be the same words?" Too often, research on variation has been siloed based on the particular question—sociolinguists do not talk to historical linguists, who do not talk to phoneticians, and so on. This edited volume seeks to bring discussions from different subfields of linguistics together to explore language variation in a broader sense and acknowledge the complexity and interwoven nature of variation itself.