Durie Mark, Ross Malcolm (eds.). The comparative method reviewed. Regularity and irregularity in language change

New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996 — viii + 321 p. — ISBN: 0-19-506607-3.
Comparative linguistics tends to be a conservative field; within the context of the latter, this book contains much that will be controversial. Historical reconstruction relies upon the comparative method, which itself crucially depends upon the assumption of the regularity of change. This regularity includes the famous "Neogrammarian Hypothesis" of the regularity of sound change: "sound change takes place according to laws that admit no exception." However, the comparative method is not restricted to the consideration of sound change, nor is the assumption of regularity thus limited: syntactic, morphological, and semantic change all are amenable, in varying degrees, to comparative reconstruction, and each type of change is constrained in ways that enable the researcher to distinguish between what are, in some sense, regular changes and irregular or exceptional changes. The notions of "regularity" and "irregularity" are controversial ones, and so this volume takes as its focus regularity, irregularity, and the comparative method. It brings together a set of empirical studies that provide a forum for theoretical and practical discussion of the limitations and potentials of the comparative method. These studies also include applications of the comparative method under challenging conditions.Malcolm Ross and Mark Durie
The Comparative Method as Heuristic
Johanna Nichols
On Sound Change and Challenges to Regularity
Lyle Campbell
Footnotes to a History of Cantonese: Accounting for the Phonological Irregularities
John Newman
Early Germanic Umlaut and Variable Rules
Mark Durie
The Neogrammarian Hypothesis and Pandemic Irregularity
Robert blust
Regularity of Change in What?
George Grace
Contact-Induced Change and the Comparative Method: Cases from Papua New Guinea
Malcolm Ross
Reconstruction in Morphology
Harold Koch
Natural Tendencies of Semantic Change and the Search for Cognates
David Wilkins