This book, based on an undergraduate course at Cambridge University, provides acomprehensive introduction to language change. Chapter 1 sets forth the history of the study oflanguage change and the basic questions in the field. The remainder of the book is divided intotwo parts. Chapters 2–7 examine internally motivated change at the phonological,syntactic, semantic, and lexical levels. Within each chapter, the author outlines importanttheoretical positions, from the Neogrammarians to the generative work of Lightfoot and morerecent studies of grammaticalization. Although, as McMahon notes, the separation of types oflanguage change by levels involves considerable idealization, the result is greater clarity oforganization. The second part (Chapters 8–12), which is concerned with language contact,language variation, pidgins and creoles, language attrition and death, and linguistic evolution, isorganized topically. It is this section that is perhaps of most interest to students of SLA. As in thefirst section, McMahon reviews the perspectives on language change that emerge from a widevariety of classic studies, including Bickerton's work on Guyanese Creole andDorian's studies of East Sutherland Gaelic. Although specialists might be disappointed tosee their favorite studies missing, the examples provide an effective introduction for the intendedaudience of undergraduates.