"The first edition of the Handbook of Historical Linguistics is the best-worn handbook among many in my office and even though it's almost 20 years old, I still consult it often. Still, historical linguistics is a very different field today than it was in 2003 and this new edition fully reflects and engages with the state of the art. It's a completely new volume, a worthy successor, and I look forward to wearing out this second edition." Joseph Salmons, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

"This is an important resource for right now and far into the future. In its breadth and depth it has everything we could ask for and more, a comprehensive survey in 24 chapters written by the world's foremost scholars. It unites time-honored fundamentals of historical linguistics and progressive lines of ongoing research."
Lyle Campbell, University of Hawai'i at M noa, USA

This brand-new, second volume of The Handbook of Historical Linguistics is a complement to the well-established first volume, initially published in 2003. It includes extended content allowing uniquely comprehensive coverage of the study of language(s) over time. Though it adds fresh perspectives on several topics previously treated in the first volume, this Handbook focuses on extensions of diachronic linguistics beyond those key issues.

This Handbook provides readers with studies of language change whose perspectives range from comparisons of large open vs. small closed corpora, via creolistics and linguistic contact in general, to obsolescence and endangerment of languages. Written by leading scholars in their respective fields, the chapters of this Handbook cover new topics such as the origin of language, the evidence from language for reconstructing human prehistory, the relevance of the study of present-day language for studying language in the past, and the benefits of linguistic fieldwork for historical investigation. Unique to this volume is a chapter that discusses in detail a large number of highly specific predictions as to the future of a widely spoken language-variety, thereby focusing long-term attention on thirty changes in the lexicon, phonology, morphology, and morphosyntax of North American English.

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II, is an ideal book for undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, researchers, and professional linguists, as well as all those interested in the history of particular languages and the history of language more generally.

Richard D. Janda is currently Visiting Scholar in French and Italian at Indiana University Bloomington, USA, but his teaching spans eleven universities in nine US states. He is author or editor of over 75 publications, including The Handbook of Historical Linguistics (Wiley Blackwell, 2003).

Brian D. Joseph is Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics and The Kenneth E. Naylor Professor of South Slavic Linguistics at The Ohio State University, USA. He has written and edited numerous books and published some 300 articles. He served as editor of the journal Language from 2002???????2009, and is currently co-editor of the Journal of Greek Linguistics.

Barbara S. Vance is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Associate Professor of French Linguistics at Indiana University Bloomington, USA. She is the author of Syntactic Change in Medieval French (1997) and is a specialist in the historical syntax of French and Occitan.

Introduction

01. Some Things Old, Some Renewed, Some on Borrowing - Here, Previewed RICHARD D. JANDA, BRIAN D. JOSEPH, AND BARBARA S. VANCE

Part I:  Change within and across Core Components of Language

02. The Expanding Universe of the Study of Sound Change
FRANS HINSKENS

03. Tonogenesis: Register  Tones Tone Realignment
GRAHAM THURGOOD

04. Historical Morphology - Overview and Update
BRIAN D. JOSEPH

05. Theory and Data in Historical Syntax
BARBARA VANCE

Part II:  On the Variety of Methods and Foci Available for the Study of Language Change

6. Dialect Convergence and the Formation of New Dialects
PETER TRUDGILL

7. Formal Syntax as a Phylogenetic Method
CRISTINA GUARDIANO, GIUSEPPE LANGOBARDI, GUIDO CORDONI, AND PAOLA CRISMA

8. Typological Approaches and Historical Linguistics
NA'AMA PAT-EL

9. Inferring Linguistic Change from a Permanently Closed Historical Corpus
KAZUHIKO YOSHIDA

10. Studying Language Change in the Present, with Special Reference to English
LAURIE BAUER

11. Bayesian Phylolinguistics
SIMON GREENHILL, PAUL HEGGARTY, AND RUSSELL GRAY

12. Eliciting Evidence of Relatedness and Change:  Fieldwork-Based Historical Linguistics
EDWARD VAJDA

13. Using Large Recent Corpora to Study Language Change,
TERTTU NEVALAINEN

Part III:  Causation and Linguistic Diachrony:  What Starts, Shoves, Shifts, Shapes, and/or Spreads Language Change? 

14. The Phonetics of Sound Change,
ALAN C. L. YU

15. What Role Do Iconicity and Analogy Play in Grammaticalization?
OLGA FISCHER

16. Spread across the Lexicon: Frequency, Borrowing, Analogy, and Homophones
BETTY S. PHILLIPS

17. Language Acquisition, Microcues, Parameters, and Syntactic Change
MARIT WESTERGAARD

18. Theorizing Language Contact: From Synchrony to Diachrony
YARON MATRAS

Part IV:  Changing Perspectives in the Study of Linguistic Diachrony

19. Genetic Creolistics as Part of Evolutionary Linguistics
SALIKOKO MUFWENE

20. Historical Change in American Sign Language
TED SUPALLA, FANNY LIMOUSIN, AND BETSY HICKS MCDONALD

21. Language Change in Language Obsolescence
ALEXANDRA Y. AIKHENVALD

22. Narrative Historical Linguistics: Linguistic Evidence for Human (Pre)history
MALCOLM ROSS 

23. A Comparative Evolutionary Approach to the Origins of Cognition and of Language
MONICA TAMARIZ

24. Perturbations, Practices, Predictions, and Postludes in a Bioheuristic Historical Linguistics
RICHARD D. JANDA