Principles of Linguistic Change, Volume 1: Internal Factors

Notational Conventions.

Acknowledgements.

Introduction: The Plan of the Work as a Whole.

Part I: Introduction and Methodology:.

1. The Use of the Present to Explain the Past.

2. An Overview of the Issues.

3. The Study of Change in Progress: Observations in Apparent Time.

4. The Study of Change in Progress: Observations in Real Time.

Part II: Chain Shifting:.

5. General Principles of Vowel Shifting.

6. Chain Shifts in Progress.

7. Resolution of the Paradoxes.

8. Reduction of the Rules and Principles.

9. Chain Shifts across Subsystems.

Part III: Mergers and Splits:.

10. Some Impossible Unmergings.

11. The General Properties of Mergers and Splits.

12. Near-Mergers.

13. The Explanation of Unmergings.

14. The Suspension of Phonemic Contrast.

Part IV: The Regularity Controversy:.

15. Evidence for Lexical Diffusion.

16. Expanding the Neogrammarian Viewpoint.

17. Regular Sound Change in English Dialect Geography.

18. A Proposed Resolution of the Regularity Question.

Part V: The Functional Character of Change:.

19. The Overestimation of Functionalism.

20. The Maintenance of Meaning.

21. The Principles Reviewed.

References.

Index.