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 I have chosen to call the book Language Change because the perspective I have developed is more integrated with cognitive and usage factors than the perspective found in more traditional historical linguistics textbooks. I seek to suggest a certain coherence in the nature of change and thus, rather than cataloging and labeling the many types of change that have been identified over the centuries o study of how languages change, I hope to give students an idea of the major trends in change by accessing examples now available on change in many different languages and language families and reporting what is known about which changes are common and which are not.