Trask's Historical Linguistics, 4th Edition

Since its first publication in 1996, Trask’s Historical Linguistics has been the resource for teaching historical linguistics. It’s great to have a new edition, carefully updated and revised by language change expert McColl Millar, so that future generations can also work with this gem of a textbook!

Professor Alexander Bergs, Osnabrück University, Germany

Trask’s Historical Linguistics is that rare thing: a wide-ranging textbook for both undergraduates and postgraduates that is not only as an authoritative introduction to the topic but also offers new insights into major research problems. Robert McColl Millar’s latest revision is a tour-de-force of clear, up-to-date and indeed inspirational exposition. It can be heartily recommended.

Jeremy J. Smith, University of Glasgow, Scotland

Robert McColl Millar is Professor of Linguistics and Scottish Language at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He has published widely on, amongst other things, linguistic contact and rapid language change, the sociology of language, and dialectology. His most recent publications include Contact: The Interaction of Closely Related Linguistic Varieties and the History of English (2016) and A Sociolinguistic History of Scotland (2020). He has recently completed A History of the Scots Language, which will be published in 2023.

R L Trask was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex, UK, and a leading authority on Basque language and historical linguistics. His book The History of Basque (1997) is an essential reference on diachronic Basque linguistics, and probably the best-known introduction to Basque linguistics. He also wrote about the problem of the origin of language and, amongst his other publications, the very successful foundational text, Language: The Basics (1995).

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