Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity (Oxford Linguistics)
"This bold new book, by one of the field's leading sociolinguists, outlines the need for a new intellectual project at the heart of our discipline, emphasising the crucial role of the small face-to-face societies that have shaped most of human history in generating the outer reaches of linguistic complexity."--Nicholas Evans, Australian National University"This focussed and important work shows that degree of contact, the size of the community of speakers, and coherence within that community are all important factors in the degree to which languages become structurally simpler (losing agreement and gender for example) or more complex. This is a must-read for anyone interested in language change."--Gary Miller, author ofLanguage Change and Linguistic Theory"An exciting book, multi-faceted and lucid, a book that can not only be recommended to researchers on linguistic change and historical sociolinguistics but also to advanced students in the field."--Juerg Schwyter,Neuphilologische Mitteilungen"In this thought-provoking work, Trudgill proposes that linguistic complexity may be determined by five interrelated social parameters: community size, density of social networks, level of social stability, amount of contact with other communities, and amount of shared information...this book offers a fresh and compelling reason for linguists to focus on less commonly studied endangered languages. We therefore recommend this stimulating book to anyone interested in exploring possible connections between sociolinguistics, language change, and typology."--Studies in Language