Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics – serie

This book is an introduction to syntactic theory and analysis which can be used for both introductory and advanced courses in theoretical syntax. Offering an alternative to the standard generative view of the subject, it deals with the major issues in syntax with which all theories are concerned. It presents syntactic phenomena from a wide range of languages and introduces students to the major typological issues that syntactic theories must address. A generous number of exercises is included, which provide practice with the concepts introduced in the text and in addition expose the student to in-depth analysis of data from many languages. Each chapter contains suggestions for further reading which encompass work from many theoretical perspectives. A separate teaching guide is available.

Agreement in language relates to the correspondence between words in a sentence, in terms of gender, case, person, or number. For example, in the sentence 'he runs', the suffix -s 'agrees' in number with the singular pronoun 'he'. Patterns of agreement vary dramatically cross-linguistically, with great diversity in the way it is expressed and the types of variation permitted. This clear introduction offers an insight into how agreement works, and how linguists have tried to account for it. Comparing examples from a range of languages, with radically different agreement systems, it demonstrates agreement at work in a variety of constructions. It shows how agreement is influenced by the conflicting effects of sentence structure and meaning, and highlights the oddities of agreement in English. The first textbook devoted to the cross-linguistic study of the topic, Agreement will be essential reading for all those studying the structure and mechanisms of natural languages.

Comparison of the grammars of human languages reveals systematic patterns of variation. Typology and universals research uncovers those patterns to formulate universal constraints on language and seek their exploration. In this essential textbook, William Croft presents a comprehensive introduction to the method and theory used in studying typology and universals. The theoretical issues discussed range from the most fundamental to the most abstract. The book provides students and researchers with extensive examples of language universals in phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. This second edition has been thoroughly rewritten and updated to reflect advances in typology and universals in the past decade, including: new methodologies such as the semantic map model and questions of syntactic argumentation; discussion of current debates over deeper explanations for specific classes of universals; and comparison of the typological and generative approaches to language.

This is a general introduction to grammaticalization, the change whereby lexical terms and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions. The authors synthesize work from several areas of linguistics, including historical linguistics, discourse analysis, and pragmatics. Data are drawn from many languages including Ewe, Finnish, French, Hindi, Hittite, Japanese, Malay, and especially English. This 2003 second edition has been thoroughly revised with substantial updates on theoretical and methodological issues that have arisen in the decade since the first edition, and includes a significantly expanded bibliography. Particular attention is paid to recent debates over directionality in change and the role of grammaticalization in creolization. Grammaticalization will be a valuable and stimulating textbook for all linguists interested in the development of grammatical forms and will also be of interest to readers in anthropology and psychology.

Binding theory seeks to explain how different kinds of nominal expressions such as names, noun phrases and pronouns have anaphoric relations amongst one another, and how they come to have reference to things in the world. This textbook provides a thorough and comprehensive introduction to modern binding theory. Starting at a very basic level, it introduces the reader to a huge variety of nominal and especially pronominal expressions from the world's languages, the ways they can be used, and current theorising about their grammatical properties and their interpretation. Daniel Büring discusses a wide range of cross-linguistic data and theoretical approaches, and unlike in existing introductions, pairs the discussion of syntactic facts with a detailed introduction to the semantic interpretation of binding structures. Written in a clear and accessible style, and with numerous exercises and examples, this textbook will be invaluable to graduate and advanced undergraduate students of syntax and semantics.

Case is an accessible introduction for students of linguistics to the ways relations between words in sentences are marked in languages. Case is fundamental to the whole system of language. One of its most interesting features is the recurrence of apparently idiosyncratic patterns and devices in otherwise unrelated languages. This book picks out these recurring strategies and explores their significance. It provides the background against which the case-marking of particular languages can be best understood. In this revised 2001 edition, Blake refines and expands on his discussions of the most important concepts in the study of case, taking into account recent developments in the field. It incorporates significant additions to the data and includes a thoroughly revised section on abstract case in the Chomskyan paradigm.

Analyzing Sound Patterns is a clear and concise introduction to phonological phenomena, covering a wide range of issues from segmental to suprasegmental problems and prosodic morphology. Assuming no prior knowledge of problem solving, this textbook shows students how to analyze phonological problems with a focus on practical tools, methodology and step-by-step instructions. It is aimed at undergraduate and beginning graduate students and places an instructional focus on developing students' analytical abilities. It includes extensive exercises of various types which engage students in reading and evaluating competing analyses, and involves students in a variety of analytical tasks. This textbook: • is designed around related phonological problems and demonstrates how they are analyzed step by step • presents and compares competing accounts of identical problems, and discusses and evaluates the arguments that distinguish one analysis from another • details how a broad array of sound patterns are identified and analyzed.

We live our lives in conversation, building families, societies and civilisations. In over seven thousand languages across the world, the basic infrastructure by which we communicate remains the same. This is the first ever book-length linguistic introduction to conversation analysis (CA), the field that has done more than any other to illuminate the mechanics of interaction. Starting by locating CA by reference to a number of cognate disciplines investigating language in use, it provides an overview of the origins and methodology of CA. By using conversational data from a range of languages, it examines the basic apparatus of sequence organisation: turn-taking, preference, identity construction and repair. As the basis for these investigations, the book uses the twin analytic resources of action and sequence to throw new light on the origins and nature of language use.

This lively introduction to figurative language explains a broad range of concepts, including metaphor, metonymy, simile, and blending, and develops new tools for analyzing them. It coherently grounds the linguistic understanding of these concepts in basic cognitive mechanisms such as categorization, frames, mental spaces, and viewpoint; and it fits them into a consistent framework which is applied to cross-linguistic data and also to figurative structures in gesture and the visual arts. Comprehensive and practical, the book includes analyses of figurative uses of both word meanings and linguistic constructions. • Provides definitions of major concepts • Offers in-depth analyses of examples, exploring multiple levels of complexity • Surveys figurative structures in different discourse genres • Helps students to connect figurative usage with the conceptual underpinnings of language • Goes beyond English to explore cross-linguistic and cross-modal data

Analyzing Sound Patterns is a clear and concise introduction to phonological phenomena, covering a wide range of issues from segmental to suprasegmental problems and prosodic morphology. Assuming no prior knowledge of problem solving, this textbook shows students how to analyze phonological problems with a focus on practical tools, methodology and step-by-step instructions. It is aimed at undergraduate and beginning graduate students and places an instructional focus on developing students' analytical abilities. It includes extensive exercises of various types which engage students in reading and evaluating competing analyses, and involves students in a variety of analytical tasks. This textbook: • is designed around related phonological problems and demonstrates how they are analyzed step by step • presents and compares competing accounts of identical problems, and discusses and evaluates the arguments that distinguish one analysis from another • details how a broad array of sound patterns are identified and analyzed.

We live our lives in conversation, building families, societies and civilisations. In over seven thousand languages across the world, the basic infrastructure by which we communicate remains the same. This is the first ever book-length linguistic introduction to conversation analysis (CA), the field that has done more than any other to illuminate the mechanics of interaction. Starting by locating CA by reference to a number of cognate disciplines investigating language in use, it provides an overview of the origins and methodology of CA. By using conversational data from a range of languages, it examines the basic apparatus of sequence organisation: turn-taking, preference, identity construction and repair. As the basis for these investigations, the book uses the twin analytic resources of action and sequence to throw new light on the origins and nature of language use.

This book demonstrates the contribution that statistics can and should make to linguistic studies. The range of work to which statistical analysis is applicable is vast: including, for example, language acquisition, language variation and many aspects of applied linguistics. The authors give a wide variety of linguistic examples to demonstrate the use of statistics in summarising data in the most appropriate way, and then making helpful inferences from the processed information. The range of techniques introduced by the book will help the reader both to evaluate and make use of literature which employs statistical analysis, and to apply statistics in their own research. Each chapter gives step-by-step explanations of particular techniques using examples from a number of fields, and is followed by extensive exercises. The early part of the book provides a thorough grounding in probability and statistical inference, and then progresses through methods such as chi-squared and analysis of variance, to multivariate methods such as cluster analysis, principal components analysis and factor analysis. None of these techniques requires the reader to have a grasp of mathematics more complex than simple algebra. Students and researchers in many fields of linguistics will find this book an invaluable introduction to the use of statistics, and a practical text for the development of skills in the application of statistics.

This 1986 textbook presents an account of the main concerns, problems and theoretical and practical issues raised by second language acquisition research. Research in this field had been mainly pedagogically oriented, but since the 1970s linguists and psychologists have become increasingly interested in the principles that underlie second language acquisition for the light these throw on how human language processing functions in general. Moreover, it is only through an understanding of these principles that foreign language teaching can become maximally effective. In the first part of his book, Wolfgang Klein provides a critical assessment of the state of the art at the time. The second part, 'from the learner's point of view', is devoted to four central problems which anyone learning a second language (either through everyday communication or in the classroom) is faced with, and whose solution constitutes the acquisition process. This accessible introduction provides students of linguistics and applied linguistics and anyone concerned with foreign language teaching with a real understanding of the fundamental issues in the field.

This book demonstrates the contribution that statistics can and should make to linguistic studies. The range of work to which statistical analysis is applicable is vast: including, for example, language acquisition, language variation and many aspects of applied linguistics. The authors give a wide variety of linguistic examples to demonstrate the use of statistics in summarising data in the most appropriate way, and then making helpful inferences from the processed information. The range of techniques introduced by the book will help the reader both to evaluate and make use of literature which employs statistical analysis, and to apply statistics in their own research. Each chapter gives step-by-step explanations of particular techniques using examples from a number of fields, and is followed by extensive exercises. The early part of the book provides a thorough grounding in probability and statistical inference, and then progresses through methods such as chi-squared and analysis of variance, to multivariate methods such as cluster analysis, principal components analysis and factor analysis. None of these techniques requires the reader to have a grasp of mathematics more complex than simple algebra. Students and researchers in many fields of linguistics will find this book an invaluable introduction to the use of statistics, and a practical text for the development of skills in the application of statistics.

This book is an introduction to psycholinguistics, the study of human language processing. It deals with the central area of this field, the language abilities of the linguistically mature, monolingual adult. It aims to be comprehensive in its coverage, dealing with both written and spoken language, and their comprehension and production, and the nature of linguistic systems and models of processing. The book is divided into two parts. Part I identifies and investigates the main contributory areas of study, concerning the nature of the language signal, the biological foundations of language (including auditory and visual systems, the organisation of language in the brain, and articulatory and manual systems), and the sources of evidence on the abstract language system. Part II reviews a number of processing models and issues, covering perception and production of speech and writing, lexical storage and retrieval, and the comprehension and production of multiword utterances. The final chapter examines the issues that arise in the context of brain damage and the consequent impairment of language processing (in aphasia and related disorders), an additional important source of evidence and area of process modelling. Psycholinguistics provides an overview of the major contemporary issues surrounding the psychological foundations of language, most of which have roots in the last decade of research. It assumes a basic grounding in linguistic theory, but it is drawn from the author's considerable experience of teaching this subject, and has thus been designed to be accessible to students of linguistics and psychology, as well as for any reader with an interest in the psychological foundations of human language. It will be an essential work for students and specialists alike.

Lexical Semantics is about the meaning of words. Although obviously a central concern of linguistics, the semantic behaviour of words has been unduly neglected in the current literature, which has tended to emphasize sentential semantics and its relation to formal systems of logic. In this textbook D. A. Cruse establishes in a principled and disciplined way the descriptive and generalizable facts about lexical relations that any formal theory of semantics will have to encompass. Among the topics covered in depth are idiomaticity, lexical ambiguity, synonymy, hierarchical relations such as hyponymy and meronymy, and various types of oppositeness. Syntagmatic relations are also treated in some detail. The discussions are richly illustrated by examples drawn almost entirely from English. Although a familiarity with traditional grammar is assumed, readers with no technical linguistic background will find the exposition always accessible. All readers with an interest in semantics will find in this original text not only essential background but a stimulating new perspective on the field.

Bernard Comrie defines tense as the grammaticalisation of location in time. In this textbook he introduces readers to the range of variation found in tense systems across the languages of the world, bringing together a rich collection of illustrative material that student and specialist alike will find invaluable. This systematic account of the data is carefully integrated with a theoretical discussion of tense that is sensitive both to the range of tense oppositions found cross-linguistically and also to the constraints on that variation. For the most part the book is written without formalism, nor is it written within the framework of any specific current theory of linguistics. Nevertheless, as the final chapter makes clear, a formal theory of tense can build upon the insights gained here. For all readers, Dr Comrie's coherent and characteristically elegant account of this complex grammatical category will provide a solid basis for further research on tense, even in a language as thoroughly studied as English.

What is the phonological organisation of natural languages like? What theoretical and analytical approaches are most fruitful? Is there any phonological theory that is 'the best' in all ways? The student of phonology is currently faced with a number of major and apparently competing theories, and the textbook writer who genuinely wishes to confront these questions is faced with the task of assessing the contribution each theory can make, while avoiding the merely fashionable or ephemeral in this contentious and evolving discipline. Roger Lass sees phonology as essentially a problem-centred discipline. Since in his view none of the supposedly comprehensive answers proposed to the questions raised above is really comprehensive or acceptable in all its detail, he concentrates rather on introducing the student to the perennial concerns in the study of sound structure. Hence his book adopts a broad and eclectic framework, unbiased toward any one model or theory. Instead, important aspects of the phenomenology of sound structure are discussed in relation to the particular phonological theory - be it Prague phonology, American structuralism, prosodic phonology, generative phonology - for which they are most salient. The book surveys a wide range of competing theories, analytical strategies, and notational systems, and attempts to provide a coherent intellectual and historical perspective on a discipline which has too often been viewed recently as developing via a series of 'revolutions'. Although this textbook assumes some command of phonetics, little other linguistic background is presupposed, and the author carefully provides the groundwork for each new development before it is introduced. In addition, the book deals in detail with two areas not customarily treated extensively in introductory texts; the phonology of casual speech, and phonological change. This spirited and original synthesis will enable its readers to acquire a real understanding of the fundamentals of phonology.

Discourse analysis is a term that has come to have different interpretations for scholars working in different disciplines. For a sociolinguist, it is concerned mainly with the structure of social interaction manifested in conversation; for a psycholinguist, it is primarily concerned with the nature of comprehension of short written texts; for the computational linguist, it is concerned with producing operational models of text-understanding within highly limited contexts. In this textbook, first published in 1983, the authors provide an extensive overview of the many and diverse approaches to the study of discourse, but base their own approach centrally on the discipline which, to varying degrees, is common to them all - linguistics. Using a methodology which has much in common with descriptive linguistics, they offer a lucid and wide-ranging account of how forms of language are used in communication. Their principal concern is to examine how any language produced by man, whether spoken or written, is used to communicate for a purpose in a context.

Interest in word-formation is probably as old as interest in language itself. As Dr Bauer points out in his Introduction, many of the questions that scholars are asking now were also being asked in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, there is still little agreement on methodology in the study of word-formation or theoretical approaches to it; even the kind of data relevant to its study is open to debate. Dr Bauer here provides students and general linguists alike with a new perspective on what is a confused and often controversial field of study, providing a resolution to the terminological confusion which currently reigns in this area. In doing so, he clearly demonstrates the challenge and intrinsic fascination of the study of word-formation. Linguists have recently become increasingly aware of the relevance of word-formation to work in syntax and semantics, phonology and morphology, and Dr Bauer discusses - within a largely synchronic and transformational framework - the theoretical issues involved. He considers topics where word-formation has a contribution to make to other areas of linguistics and, without pretending to provide a fully-fledged theory of word-formation, develops those points which he sees as being central to its study. The book draws on a wide range of sources, and general points are illustrated from a variety of languages. As the title suggests, though, the exposition is principally illustrated with material drawn from English, including close analysis of a number of sets of neologisms. A survey of the types of word-formation found in English is also included. Some background in linguistics is assumed, but students of linguistics and English language with no previous knowledge of word-formation or of morphology at all will find English Word-Formation an accessible and stimulating textbook.

An introduction to the general linguistic study of aspect. Topics covered include the relation of tense and aspect, the morphology and the semantics of aspect, and structuralist and philosophical approaches. Dr Comrie draws his examples particularly from English and the Slavonic and Romance languages, but also from Arabic, Chinese, Welsh, Greek and a variety of others. This is the first study of aspect, considered as a general linguistic phenomenon. It is intended for students of individual languages as well as for students of linguistics.

An elementary introduction to formal logic, particularly intended for linguists and others interested in languages. Concepts and theories developed within formal logic for the study of artificial languages have for some time been fruitfully applied to the study of natural languages and some knowledge of them is necessary for students of linguists (especially semantics). With this need in mind the authors offer a clear, succinct and basic introduction to set theory, inference, propositional and predicate logic, deduction, modal and intensional logic, and various concomitant extensions of these. There is a discussion too of the relation between linguistics and logical analysis and between logic and natural language. The authors see increasing scope for co-operation between logicians and linguistics in studying the structure of language, and it is the overall aim of the book to promote this co-operation.

Historical Linguistics is concerned with the process of language change through time. It investigates how and why the language of individuals, a social group or a whole 'speech community' develops in respect of its pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Dr Bynon regards language as essentially a dynamic phenomenon, whose character can be at best only partly understood by a static, and necessarily idealized, synchronic approach. In Part I she establishes the theoretical framework by providing a systematic survey of the three main models of language development - the neogrammarian, structuralist, and transformational generative. Examples drawn substantially from English and German, but also from classical languages, French, Welsh and a variety of others, are used to explain and compare these approaches. In Part II she turns to sociolinguistics and shows how changes within a language over a period of time, and changes brought about by contact between languages, are both indicators and agents of more general cultural developments. Accounts of bilingualism and of pidgin and Creole languages are included as well as wider-ranging examples of different kinds of borrowing such as loan words, loan translations and extensions of meaning. The student is provided with a practical and critical guide both to what has been done and what can be done to discover and verify these linguistic relationships. Designed primarily as a textbook for linguistics and philology students, this book will also be of interest to those studying English language, classics and modern languages.

Semantics is a bridge discipline between linguistics and philosophy; but linguistics student are rarely able to reach that bridge, let alone cross it to inspect and assess the activity on the other side. Professor Kempson's textbook seeks particularly to encourage such exchanges. She deals with the standard linguistic topics like componential analysis, semantic universals and the syntax-semantics controversy. But she also provides for students with no training in philosophy or logic an introduction to such central topics in the philosophy of language as logical form, truth, speech acts, analyticity, entailment and presupposition. The exposition throughout is deliberately argumentative rather than descriptive, introducing the student step by step to the major problems in theoretical semantics. Special emphasis is placed on the need to consider individual arguments within the overall perspective of semantics as an integral part of general linguistic theory. Written primarily as a textbook for undergraduates and graduates in linguistics departments, this book will also be useful to undergraduates in philosophy and in psychology where linguistics is a part of their course.

The mechanism of speech is a very complex one and in order to undertake any analysis of language it is important to understand the processes that go to make up the message that a speaker transmits and a listener receives. Professor Fry therefore first takes the reader through the various stages of the speech chain: from language units to nerve impulses to muscle movements to sound waves, and vice versa as the message is received and decoded. He then explains the basic physical principles involved in the generation and propagation of sound energy and in the phenomenon of resonance. These principles are then applied to the speech mechanism itself and to the particular kinds of sound which constitute speech. There is a fully illustrated account of the use of the sound spectrograph in acoustic analysis and chapters dealing with the acoustic features of English sounds and with the way we recognise speech sounds by the acoustic cues inherent in a particular language. Professor Fry gave courses on the physics of speech to students of applied as well as theoretical linguistics and to speech therapists, and his clear account will therefore provide a basic textbook for such courses as well as being of interest to people working in departments of speech and in communications generally.

Those aspects of language use that are crucial to an understanding of language as a system, and especially to an understanding of meaning, are the acknowledged concern of linguistic pragmatics. This textbook provides a lucid and integrative analysis of the central topics in pragmatics - deixis, implicature, presupposition, speech acts, and conversational structure. A central concern of the book is the relation between pragmatics and semantics, and Dr Levinson shows clearly how a pragmatic approach can resolve some of the problems semantics have been confronting and simplifying semantic analyses. The exposition is always clear and supported by helpful exemplification. The detailed analyses of selected topics give the student a clear view of the empirical rigour demanded by the study of linguistic pragmatics, but Dr Levinson never loses sight of the rich diversity of the subject. An introduction and conclusion relate pragmatics to other fields in linguistics and other disciplines concerned with language usage - psychology, philosophy, anthropology and literature.

The way children learn their native language has been the subject of intense and widespread investigation in the last decades, stimulated by advances in theoretical linguistics and the behavioural sciences. For the student, this has meant a bewildering number of research reports, often differing in their theoretical viewpoint and the methodological approach they advocate, and apparently conflicting in their conclusions. Child Language provides the student with a cool, clear and concise survey of the most important recent research work, and puts into perspective the contributions made by Chomsky, Piaget and others. The research surveyed, though primarily of English-speaking children, includes studies of children whose first language is not English and bilingual children. Dr Elliot believes that the study of child language necessarily raises questions about the nature of language - is human language something only humans can learn? - and about learning itself - how does our ability to learn language depend on biological factors, such as our age, and how important is our social and linguistic environment? Little justification is found for the view that language has an independent existence for the young child, and their linguistic achievements are studied within the context of their development in general.

This textbook provides a thorough and precise account of all the major areas of English grammar. For practical reasons the author concentrates on Standard English and only selected aspects of its regional variation. The book is written for students who may have no previous knowledge of linguistics and little familiarity with 'traditional' grammar. All grammatical terms, whether traditional or more recent, are therefore carefully explained, and in the first three chapters the students is introduced to the theoretical concepts and methodological principles needed to follow the later descriptive chapters. Nevertheless, the book is more than a straightforward 'grammar of English'. Rodney Huddleston does not espouse any formalised contemporary model of syntax and morphology, but he adopts the framework of modern 'structural' linguistics, in a very broad understanding of that term. The grammatical categories postulated derive from a study of the combinational and contrastive relationships the words and other forms enter into, and Dr Huddleston pays particular attention to the problem of choosing between alternative analyses and justifying the analysis he proposes. In this sense his book is addressed to the student of linguistics, who will find Introduction to the Grammar of English a much needed foundation for more advanced work in theoretical linguistics.

This 1986 textbook presents an account of the main concerns, problems and theoretical and practical issues raised by second language acquisition research. Research in this field had been mainly pedagogically oriented, but since the 1970s linguists and psychologists have become increasingly interested in the principles that underlie second language acquisition for the light these throw on how human language processing functions in general. Moreover, it is only through an understanding of these principles that foreign language teaching can become maximally effective. In the first part of his book, Wolfgang Klein provides a critical assessment of the state of the art at the time. The second part, 'from the learner's point of view', is devoted to four central problems which anyone learning a second language (either through everyday communication or in the classroom) is faced with, and whose solution constitutes the acquisition process. This accessible introduction provides students of linguistics and applied linguistics and anyone concerned with foreign language teaching with a real understanding of the fundamental issues in the field.