 history ling magic common language jakobson mathesius trubetzkoy prague linguistic circle jindrich toman current study linguistics series mit press hardcover available mit press mitpressorder mit edu social cultural environment historical factor tenet prague linguistic circle available discussion ling semiotics tobin yishai invariance markedness distinctive feature analysis contrastive study sign system english hebrew john benjamins xius pp contrastive analysis hb us eur us hfl volume provide kind contrastive analysis two unrelate language english hebrew base semiotic concept invariance markedness distinctive feature theory concentrate linguistic form construction remarkably different each language despite fact share same familiar classification label tobin demonstrate why traditional modern syntactic category grammatical number verb tense aspect mood voice conditional interrogative etc equivalent across language argue socal universal concept function differently each language system belong distinct languagespecific semantic domain mark different set semantic feature current issue linguistic theory iii socioling lippigreen rosina university michigan ann arbor language ideology language change early modern german sociolinguistic study consonantal system nuremberg john benjamins xiv pp sociolinguistics hb us eur us hfl quantitative study base computerize corpus text write five man early th century nuremberg employ multivariate glm statistical procedure analyze linguistic social stylistic factor work individually interaction influence variation observe text study provide evidence consonantal variation early modern write text random particular importance quantification individual s relationship emerge ideology language standardization relationship interact write language variation current issue linguistic theory 