Linguistics: An Introduction

Description

Front Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Table of Contents List of Figures List of Maps List of Tables Preface Organization and presentation Manner of presentation Pedagogic philosophy Range and type of information Theoretical framework Structure of the book About the second edition Guide for the student Acknowledgements Abbreviations and Conventions Used in Examples 1. Introduction 1.1 What is linguistics? Linguistics as a science The subject matter of linguistics 1.2 Fundamental concepts The sign Relations between form and meaning in the sign Iconic signs Symbolic signs Language as a sign system Nature of signs in human language Symbolic signs in language Iconic signs in language Relations between linguistic signs Syntagmatic Paradigmatic Mediums of language 1.3 Design features of human language Arbitrariness Displacement Cultural transmission Duality Productivity Reflexivity 1.4 Outline of modern linguistics from ahistorical perspective Formal linguistics Functional linguistics Scope of modern linguistics Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes Part I. Language: System and Structure 2. Sounds of Language: Phonetics and Phonology 2.1 Fundamental properties of speech sounds The speech chain Phones 2.2 The vocal tract The lungs The larynx The oral cavity The nasal cavity 2.3 Types of phones Consonants Places of articulation Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal Manners of articulation Stops Nasals Fricatives Affricates Laterals Rhotics Glides Vowels 2.4 Some additional features Airstream mechanisms Glottalic Velaric Coarticulation Diphthongs Syllables 2.5 Prosodies Pitch Tone Intonation Stress 2.6 Phonology Phonemes and allophones Non-contrastiveness of allophones Free variation Complementary distribution Rules of realization 2.7 How to establish the phonemes of a language Example Why focus on suspicious pairs? 2.8 Transcription Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes 3. Structure of Words: Morphology 3.1 Words Notion of the word The structure of words 3.2 Morphemes, allomorphs and morphs 3.3 Main types of morphemes Types according to occurrence Free morphemes Bound morphemes Types of morpheme according to function or use Lexical morphemes Bound roots Derivational affixes Grammatical morphemes Free grammatical morphemes Bound grammatical morphemes Inflectional affixes Clitics Differences between derivational affixes, inflectional affixes and clitics Summary of morpheme types 3.4 Allomorphs and allomorph conditioning Types of allomorph Types of conditioning factors Morphological rules 3.5 Morphological description Case morphology in Warumungu Morphology of locative case marking in Turkish Locative case in Meryam Mir 3.6 Morphological analysis Sample morphological analysis: Hungarian verbs Grammatical morphemes Lexical morphemes Structure of the verb Morphological analysis by speakers Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes 4. Lexicon 4.1 The lexicon Nature of the lexicon Openness Parts-of-speech Main categories Criteria Parts-of-speech across languages 4.2 Ways of making new words Limitations on formation of new words Clipping Acronyming Blending Borrowing Major features of word borrowing Some borrowings into English Some borrowings from English Coinage 4.3 Ways of using old forms to get new meanings Derivation Compounding Reduplication Backformation Meaning extension Meaning narrowing 4.4 Fixed expressions Idioms Collocations 4.5 What’s in a word? Word taboos Euphemisms Dysphemisms Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes 5. Structure of Sentences: Syntax 5.1 What is syntax? Openness The notion of sentence Grammaticality 5.2 Hierarchical structure in sentences Grouping Evidence for groupings of words Movability Contractibility Meaning differences 5.3 Syntactic units Clauses Phrases Nature of phrases Types of phrase Noun phrases Verb phrases Other phrase types Complications 5.4 The structure of clauses Fundamentals Description of the clause in terms of phrases Problems Grammatical relations Experiential roles Subject and object Theme Morphology and syntax Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes 6. Meaning 6.1 What is meaning? Reference and sense Sense and connotations Literal and figurative meaning Sentence and utterance meaning Overview of types of meaning in language 6.2 Semantics Homophony, polysemy and vagueness Lexical semantic relations Synonymy Antonymy Hyponymy Meronymy Specifying lexical meanings Sentence semantics 6.3 Pragmatics: The meaning of utterances Speech acts Performatives Direct and indirect speech acts Felicity conditions Reference The cooperative principle Presuppositions Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Part II. Language: A Human Phenomenon 7. Sociolinguistics: Language in its Social Context 7.1 Language as a social phenomenon Social domains of language use The speech community 7.2 Social varieties and variation Regional variation Standard dialects Isoglosses Variation according to social group Variation according to gender Other dimensions of variation Accommodation 7.3 Varieties and variation according to use Secret varieties Respect varieties 7.4 Language use in bilingual communities Language choice Code-switching 7.5 Language shift and endangerment Rate of language shift, endangerment and death Causes of language shift Structural changes accompanying language shift and endangerment Language maintenance and revival Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes 8. Text and Discourse 8.1 Preliminaries Structure beyond the sentence Text and discourse 8.2 Text organization Text types and structures Narratives Expository texts Other genres Coherence and cohesion Coherence Cohesion Reference Conjunction Substitution Ellipsis Lexical cohesion 8.3 Discourse: Language in interactive use Hierarchical organization of interactions Moves Exchanges Transactions Summary of discourse components Managing interactions Turn-taking Pre-sequences Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Note 9. Psycholinguistics: Language, the Mind and the Brain 9.1 Language and cognition Language and thought: The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis Revisions to the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis 9.2 Language processing Comprehension Perception of speech sounds Four difficulties in perception of speech sounds Categorical nature of speech perception Role of vision and other senses Identification and recognition of words Comprehension of sentences Production Relations between production and comprehension 9.3 Language and the brain Basic structure of the human brain Localization and lateralization Evidence for localization and lateralization Aphasia Broca’s aphasia Wernicke’s aphasia Other types of aphasia Summary of aphasia types Problems of interpretation Split-brains Dichotic listening Wada test Brain scanning Positron Emission Tomography Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Concluding comments Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes 10. Language Acquisition 10.1 Major features of child language acquisition General characteristics of language acquisition Preliminary remarks Basic schedule of acquisition Pre-language stages One-word stage The two-word stage Telegraphic speech Basic mastery Continued acquisition Caretaker speech Acquisition of phonetics and phonology Acquisition of lexicon Acquisition of semantics Acquisition of morphology Acquisition of syntax Negative constructions Interrogatives Complex sentence constructions 10.2 Strategies for child language learning Broad strategies for language leaning Conditioned-response learning Imitation Hypothesis testing Innateness Strategies for learning meaning of words 10.3 Second-language learning Developmental stages in second-language learning L2 learning of phonetics and phonology L2 learning of morphology L2 learning of syntax Effects of age on L2 learning Transfer Factors relevant to L2 learning Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes 11. Language in its Biological Context 11.1 Natural communication systems of other animals Commonalities of signs in communication systems of humans and animals Natural communication systems of some animal species Bees Birds Vervet monkeys Apes 11.2 Teaching human language to animals Dogs’ understanding of human language Apes Teaching ASL to chimpanzees Teaching chimpanzees to use tokens or keys Evaluation of apes’ language abilities 11.3 Origins and evolution of human language Nineteenth-century theories of language origins More recent theories of language origins Gestural origins The grooming hypothesis Language as a genetic predisposition Language and social cognition Concluding remarks on language evolution Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes Part III. Language: Uniformity and Diversity 12. Gesture and Sign Languages 12.1 The visual-gestural medium Preliminary remarks Gestures 12.2 Primary sign languages Phonetics and phonology of sign languages Morphology of sign languages Sign language lexicon Sign language syntax Sign languages in linguistics 12.3 Alternate sign languages Sign languages in Central Australia Plains Indian Sign Language Ts’ixa Sign Language Monastic sign languages Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes 13. Writing 13.1 The visual-inscribed medium Differences from other mediums Emergence of early writing systems 13.2 Types of writing system Logographic systems Syllabaries Abjads Alphabets 13.3 The English writing system 13.4 Writing systems in society 13.5 Linguistic features of some written varieties Text messaging Writing on the internet Twitter Blogs Wikis Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes 14. Unity and Diversity in Language Structure 14.1 Preliminaries to the study of the unity and diversity of languages Two complementary perspectives on variation in language Requirements 14.2 Universals of language Absolute non-implicational universals Non-absolute non-implicational universals Absolute implicational universals Non-absolute implicational universals 14.3 Typology Two morphological typologies of languages Morpheme integrity Affixing typology Morphological typology Grammatical number Nominal possession Case systems Syntactic typology Universality of grammatical relations Word order typology Argument structure Order of essential elements Phonological typology: Tone systems Lexical–semantic typology: Verbs of motion 14.4 Explaining unity and diversity of languagestructure Common origins Human biology Functional unity of language Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes 15. Language Change 15.1 Major characteristics of language change 15.2 Sound change Grimm’s Law Some common types of sound changes Loss or deletion Insertion Assimilation Dissimilation Metathesis Generality of sound changes 15.3 Morphological change Acquisition and loss of bound morphemes Analogical change Reanalysis 15.4 Syntactic change Changes in word order Changes in grammatical constructions Borrowing of grammatical constructions Reanalysis of grammatical constructions Extension of grammatical constructions 15.5 Grammaticalization 15.6 Semantic change Pejoration Amelioration Hyperbole Understatement Direction of semantic change 15.7 Causes of language change Physiological tendencies Functional considerations Identity Foreign influence Taboo Social upheaval Regularization Structural pressure Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Note 16. Languages of the World 16.1 Number and variety of the world’s languages How many languages are spoken in the world today? Distribution of languages Why so many languages? Numbers of speakers of the world’s languages 16.2 Relations among the languages How are the world’s languages related? Methods for establishing language families Comparative method Mass-comparison Lexicostatistics 16.3 Six major language families and one disputed family Indo-European Austronesian Afroasiatic Niger-Congo Sino-Tibetan Trans-New Guinea Khoisan 16.4 Contact languages Pidgins Creoles Mixed languages Summing up Guide to further reading Issues for further thought and exercises Notes Glossary References Index of Languages Index of Names Index