Trask's Historical Linguistics (alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi 1996; vuoden 2007 painos)

linguistics ( )

This is an impressively well-written textbook! As much as I love linguistics, my assigned reading is not always so well loved, but this book is legitimately an enjoyable read in addition to being informative, which is a good thing considering the size of the book.. A few critiques: some explanations of phenomena and processes would be more clearly explained with the addition of charts detailing changes instead of just textual descriptions. I would encourage readers to diagram things out when they get a bit fuzzy-- that often really helps. Also, there are some inconsistencies with the transcription used in the exercises, so beware of that. Finally, you will walk away from the text knowing more about Basque and Scots than you'd probably like. That's fine and great-- the examples are good ones-- but the authors' specialties are very apparent at times, and there are both pluses and minuses to that. ( )