Maria Luisa Porzio Gernia and Larissa Bonfante, "Giuliano Bonfante and Historical Linguistics, 1930-2000," translated by Steven Baker (original) (raw)

Campbell's (2013) Historical Linguistics: A Critical Review

The purpose of this paper is to provide a radical critical review of Lyle Campbell's (2013) Historical linguistics: An introduction, (3 nd edn.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. More precisely, it gives an overview, survey, and critique of the main topics, principles, and theories which the work covers. My review is based on using it as the main textbook for ENGL 358 Historical Linguistics for over 5 years where the students say 'it's frightening'. The book comes in 538 (+ xxii) pages, consisting of seventeen chapters appended with a bibliography and three indices. The main topic of the book is language change at the levels of sounds (Ch. 2), meaning (Ch. 9), morphology (Ch. 10), syntax (Ch. 11), and writing or orthography (Ch. 15), and language classification (Chs. 5-6, 12, 14). The book, which I usually cover in one semester of 16 weeks, is interestingly encyclopedic and bulky with plenty of generally useful and practical examples and exercises although some chapters have almost no exercises at all like Chs. 7, 9, 12, 13, & 15. Overall the book is interesting and stimulating to read with a huge amount of information which may be confusing and unclear at times. However, it suffers from major drawbacks which will be considered chapter by chapter