Includes bibliographical references and index.

Where Was Historical Linguistics in 1968 and Where Is It Now? / Marc Pierce and Hans C. Boas -- What Has Been Built on Empirical Foundations / William Labov -- Building on Empirical Foundations: Individual and Community Change in Real Time / Gillian Sankoff -- Timely Notes on Saussure and Hermann Paul after 1968 / Paul J. Hopper -- Historical Linguistics Since 1968: on Some of the Causes of Linguistic Change / Sarah G. Thomason -- Precursors of Work on Grammaticalization and Constructionalization in Directions for Historical Linguistics / Elizabeth Closs Traugott -- Historical Linguistics in the 50 Years Since Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968) / Brian D. Jose.

"This volume consists of revised versions of presentations given at a roundtable on "New Directions for Historical Linguistics: Impact and Synthesis, 50 years later" held at the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics in San Antonio in 2017, as well as an introduction by the editors. The roundtable discussed the evolution of historical linguistics since the 1966 Symposium on "Directions for Historical Linguistics," held in Austin, Texas. Six prominent scholars of historical linguistics and sociolinguistics contributed: William Labov, Gillian Sankoff, Elizabeth Traugott, Brian Joseph, Sarah Thomason, and Paul Hopper".