SUMMARY Against the dominating position in theoretical linguistics that it is one of the natural sciences falling under covering (deductive-nomological) laws, it is argued here that linguistics is rather one of the so-called human sciences. It is further shown that the pattern explanation developed… read more
SUMMARY It is maintained that the basic semiotic concepts of icon and index in the Peircean sense give the best tools for both describing and explaining change. The notion of iconic index is used to explicate assimilation, morphophonemics, sociolectal pronunciation variation, grammatical agreement,… read more