A history of cyclical change -- Micro cycles : determiner and verbal cycles -- Micro cycles : polarity and discourse cycles -- Macro cycles -- Explanations and mechanisms -- Conclusions and future directions.

"Cyclical language change is a linguistic process by which a word, phrase, or part of the grammar loses its meaning or function and is then replaced by another. This can even happen on the level of an entire language, which can experience a change in the language family it is a part of. This new text is a comprehensive introduction to this phenomenon, the mechanisms underlying it, and the relations between the different types of cycles: Elly van Gelderen reviews the subject widely and holistically, defining key terms and comprehensively presenting diverse theoretical perspectives and empirical findings"--