Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Figures -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- 1.1 The benefits of language -- 1.2 …its shortcomings -- 1.3 …and ways of studying it -- 1.3.1 Observation and inference in language modelling -- 1.3.2 Modelling by inference: data problems -- (1) GRAND LEG - SEIZE OURS -- 1.3.3 Modelling by inference 2: modelling what, how and why? -- 2 The historical perspective -- 2.1 Evidence of language change -- 2.2 Language as a changing object -- 3 Approaching 'language change' -- 3.1 Preliminaries -- 3.2 Establishing basic assumptions -- 3.3 What 'language change' must represent -- 3.3.1 Language as text -- 3.3.2 Language as behaviour -- 3.3.3 Language as competence -- 3.3.4 Language as a biological capacity -- 3.3.5 The competence-behaviour-text cycle -- 3.3.6 Beyond the individual: language and the community or language 'as such'? -- 3.3.7 Summary -- 3.4 Reconstructing a particular 'phonological change' -- 3.4.1 Language evolution as property replication -- 3.4.1.1 What makes replicating systems special -- 3.4.1.2 The study of replicating systems and the linguistic community -- 3.4.1.3 Summary and outlook -- 4 The Darwinian approach -- 4.1 A linguist's view of evolutionary biology -- 4.1.1 Why are life-forms as they are? -- 4.1.2 Phenotypes and genotypes -- 4.1.3 Genotypes and gene replication -- 4.1.4 The (Neo-) Darwinian theory of gene-based evolution -- 4.1.4.1 The mechanics of gene replication -- 4.1.4.2 Replication under constraints -- 4.1.4.2.1 Constraints on replicator life-spans -- 4.1.4.2.2 Limits on copying fidelity and the emergence of variation -- 4.1.4.2.3 Differential replication -- 4.1.4.2.4 First résumé -- 4.1.4.2.5 Consequences of constrained replication: adaptation and 'phenotypic' (side-)effects -- 4.1.4.2.6 Stable diversity.

4.1.4.2.7 Specifying the theory: replicator alliances and higher-level organisation -- 4.1.4.3 Derived higher-level categories 1: 'genomes' and 'organisms' -- 4.1.4.4 Derived higher-level categories 2: 'species' -- 4.1.4.5 Derived higher-level categories 3: extended phenotypes, families, social groups, symbioses and the general 'fuzziness' of higher-level categories -- 4.1.5 Summary and some further discussion -- 4.1.5.1 The essentially reductionist character of Evolutionary Theory -- 4.1.5.2 Emergent top-down constraints -- 4.1.5.3 Explanatory limits of Evolutionary Theory -- 4.1.5.3.1 The role of environmental contingencies -- 4.1.5.3.2 Randomness and the impossibility of predictive laws -- 4.1.5.3.3 The complexities of development -- 4.1.5.4 Optimality in Evolutionary Theory -- 4.1.5.5 Evolutionary Theory as a theory of change -- 5 Generalising Darwinism -- 5.1 The temptations of metaphorical transfer -- 5.2 'Complex Adaptive Systems' and 'Universal Darwinism' -- 5.2.1 Macro-level properties of Complex Adaptive Systems -- 5.2.2 Life and language seen as Complex Adaptive Systems -- 5.2.2.1 Species as Complex Adaptive Systems -- 5.2.2.2 Languages as Complex Adaptive Systems -- 5.2.2.2.1 Language acquisition -- 5.2.2.2.2 Language change -- 5.2.2.3 Summary -- 5.2.3 Inside Complex Adaptive Systems: universal Darwinism and cultural replicators -- 5.2.3.1 The concept of cultural replicators, and Dawkins' 'memes' -- 5.2.3.2 Historical linguistics as memetics -- 5.3 Résumé and outlook -- 6 Towards an evolutionary theory of language -- 6.1 Can there be linguistic replicators at all? -- 6.1.1 Criteria for identifying replicators -- 6.1.2 Narrowing the search -- 6.1.3 Arguing from size -- 6.1.4 A few potential replicators -- 6.1.4.1 Phonemes and distinctive features: replicators vs. building blocks.

6.1.4.2 Phoneme clusters, syllables, morphemes and the question of meaning -- 6.1.4.3 Supra-segmental phonological constituents -- 6.1.4.4 Morpheme clusters, collocations, phrases, idioms, sentences, texts -- 6.1.4.5 Categories and rules -- 6.1.4.5.1 Syntactic categories and some theoretical implications -- 6.1.4.5.2 Rules, phonological and otherwise -- 6.1.5 Résumé I: a set of likely language memes -- 6.1.6 Résumé II: mental replicators, how to keep them apart from their extra-mental expressions, and why this is important -- 6.2 What memes might look like: on the material implementation of linguistic replicators -- 6.2.1 The problem and why it is important -- 6.2.2 Outlining a tentative working model -- 6.2.3 Summary -- 6.3 Sketching a few language memes -- 6.3.1 Phone-memes -- 6.3.2 Morph-memes -- 6.3.3 Memes for supra-segmentals -- 6.3.3.1 Syllabic relations -- 6.3.3.2 Feet -- 6.3.4 Rule-memes -- 6.3.5 Summary -- 6.4 From replication to evolution -- 6.4.1 Variation and selection -- 6.4.2 Selection, agency, and time -- 6.4.3 Human whim and a structuralist scare -- 6.4.4 Can replicators have a point-of-view of their own? -- 6.5 The hows and whys of meme replication -- 6.5.1 Introduction -- 6.5.2 How can one copy what one cannot see? Revisiting the ontological problem -- 6.5.3 Dawkins' proposal: memetic information is digital -- 6.5.4 The attractions of 'purpose' -- 6.5.5 The teleology argument and how to get around it -- 6.5.6 How and why neuronal structures (including memes) receive environmental feedback -- 6.5.7 Emotions and instincts -- 6.5.8 Instincts for imitating -- 6.5.9 Why imitation pays -- 6.5.10 Summary -- 6.6 Selective pressures in memetic evolution -- 6.6.1 Genetic pressures -- 6.6.2 Memetic pressures -- 6.6.3 Social pressures -- 6.6.4 Other pressures -- 6.7 Summary -- 7 What does all this imply for the study of language change?.

7.1 Linguistic signs, languages and language components as replicator alliances -- 7.2 Group dynamics in replicator teams: how individual languages acquire specific characteristics -- 7.3 How languages determine their own histories -- 8 How to live with feet, if one happens to be a morph-meme -- 8.1 Early Middle English vowel lengthenings and shortenings, and what makes them problematic -- 8.1.1 Introduction -- 8.1.2 Non-evolutionary accounts and their shortcomings -- 8.1.2.1 Neogrammarian and handbook accounts -- 8.1.2.2 Minkova's bird's-eye view -- 8.1.2.3 Generalised Quantity Adjustment: a rule in search of an interpretation -- 8.1.3 Outlines of an evolutionary account -- 8.2 Utterance rhythm and Middle English vowel quantity: a case of intra-linguistic meme-meme co-adaptation -- 8.2.1 The case of weakly stressed items such as ME have -- 8.2.1.1 Introduction: Open Syllable Lengthening and have -- 8.2.1.2 The classical interpretation -- 8.2.1.3 A replicator-based account -- 8.2.1.4 Reconsidering the meme(-plex) for feet: the [Sw]-component -- 8.2.1.5 Foot-morph relations -- 8.2.1.6 Conclusion: have remained short because it was better adapted to the [Sw]-meme for alternating rhythm -- 8.2.2 Generalising the case of have: the adaptive value of 'regular' open syllable lengthenings -- 8.3 Vowel quantity and foot length -- 8.3.1 Introduction -- 8.3.2 Another look at the meme-plex for feet: the timing unit -- 8.3.3 What morph-memes may learn about timing -- 8.3.4 Vowel lengthening and shortening as adaptive responses to pressures exerted by the timing unit in the memeplex for feet -- 8.3.5 Summary -- 8.4 Competing selectional pressures and the statistical nature of EME quantity adjustments -- 8.5 The surprising stability of short vowels in CVC monosyllables or The descent of [mæn] and [god] -- 8.5.1 Introduction -- 8.5.2 Handbook lore.

8.5.3 The actual figures -- 8.5.4 Idiosyncrasies in the distribution of lengthened variants among Old English [CVC] items -- 8.5.5 An attempted explanation -- 8.6 Summary -- 9 The prosodic evolution of English word forms or The Great Trochaic Conspiracy -- 9.1 Introduction -- 9.2 The Great Trochaic Conspiracy -- 9.2.1 Germanic high vowel deletion -- 9.2.2 Medial syncope -- 9.2.3 Old English shortening before consonant clusters -- 9.2.4 Old English trisyllabic shortening -- 9.2.5 Homorganic lengthening -- 9.2.6 Early Middle English shortening before consonant clusters -- 9.2.7 Early Middle English trisyllabic shortening -- 9.2.8 Early Middle English CVC lengthening -- 9.2.9 Early Middle English open syllable lengthening -- 9.2.10 Schwa deletion -- 9.2.11 Middle English Breakings and related changes -- 9.2.11.1 /X/-breaking -- 9.2.11.2 /j/-breaking -- 9.2.11.3 Vowel epenthesis in liquid+γ codas -- 9.2.11.4 w-vocalisation -- 9.2.11.5 Breaking before liquids -- 9.2.11.6 Other breakings -- 9.3 Summary -- 9.4 When did the Trochaic Conspiracy end? An afterthought -- 10 Conclusion -- References -- Index.