Andrew Radford - Linguistics An Introduction [Second Edition]

As far as changes in content are concerned, we have introduced a whole new

section on sentence use (section 27), including introduction and discussion of core areas of pragmatics and conversational analysis. Additionally, section 23 on sentence meaning has been modified so that it is not exclusively concerned with quantified expressions in Logical Form and now contains a short discussion of thematic roles with linked exercises. Finally, individual authors have taken the opportunity to update the sections for which they have been primarily responsible, when this seemed appropriate. Thus, all sections in part III (sentences) have been updated to reflect the change in the theoretical approach we favour here, whereby Tense replaces Inflection as a clausal head. There have been numerous other small changes in these sections to reflect recent theoretical developments. New sociolinguistic material in section 3 introduces communities of practice, and section 5

now contains a short introduction to Optimality Theory, an increasingly popular approach to the understanding of phonological structure. We have, of course, also attempted to correct errors that appeared in the first edition.

Turning to the exercises that follow each section, in many cases, these are a complete replacement for those appearing in the first edition. In other cases, we have retained some or all of the original exercises, but supplemented them with new material. For some sections, the set of exercises contains a model answer. At one stage, our intention was to provide this for all sets of exercises, but it became apparent that this was not always appropriate. Accordingly, individual authors have taken their own decision on this matter, and we now believe that the imposition of a one-size-fits-all format in this connection would not be appropriate, sometimes leading to rather pointless exemplification.

Finally, we have updated recommended further reading throughout and included bibliographical information for this alongside new materials referred to in the text and in the exercises.

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A note for course organisers

and class teachers

There are a number of points which teachers can usefully bear in mind when

considering how to use this book.

Firstly, the division into three major parts (sounds, words and sentences), with the foundational concepts and the ‘hyphenated’ disciplines being covered in each part, provides some options which are not readily available in the context of more conventional structures. Specifically, the distribution of competence for small-group teaching becomes a more manageable problem within this structure. The graduate student in phonology can take classes linked to sounds and give way to the

morphologist when the course moves onto words, and the situation where hard-

pressed assistants have to spend valuable time reacquiring basic material remote from their own research area is avoided. Additionally, as the three parts of the book are largely self-contained, each could be integrated as the introductory segment of more specialised courses in phonology, morphology or syntax. This might be particularly appropriate for students who have followed an introductory course which is at a somewhat lower level than what we are aiming at here.

Secondly, the book contains extensive exercise material at the end of each

section, and it is intended that this should be helpful for small-group teaching. We have distributed references to the exercises throughout the text, the idea being that when an exercise is referenced, students should be in a position to undertake it with profit. On occasions, these references cluster at the end of a section, indicating that the whole section must be covered before students can fruitfully tackle the exercises. Obviously, this gives class teachers some flexibility in deciding what proportion of a section will be required reading, and while this might be seen as disrupting the uniformity of the structure of the book, we believe that its pedagogical justification is clear.

Thirdly, we should mention a couple of points about conventions. We have

attempted to use bold face on the introduction of any technical or specialised vocabulary and thereafter use ordinary typeface unless particular emphasis justifies italics. There is always room for disagreement on what counts as technical or specialised and on the good sense of repeating bold-face references, at least on some occasions. We wouldn’t wish to say we’ve got it right, but we have thought about it!

Finally, at the end of each of the major parts of the book, we have included some bibliographical material. The purpose of this is twofold: we provide guidance on further reading for the topics covered in the book and we also give references for xiv

A note for course organisers and class teachers

xv

the research on which we rely in our discussions. Usually, although not always, these latter works are not appropriate for a student’s next step in the discipline, but providing references in this way gives us a means of acknowledging the work of the many colleagues whose ideas have influenced us. Throughout these sections, we use the author–date system, and at the end of the book full details of both types of publication – further reading and original research – can be found in a conventional bibliography.

Introduction

The major perspective we adopt in this book regards a language as a cognitive system which is part of any normal human being’s mental or psychological

structure. An alternative to which we shall also give some attention emphasises the social nature of language, for instance studying the relationships between social structure and different dialects or varieties of a language.

The cognitive view has been greatly influenced over the past five decades by the ideas of the American linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky. The central proposal which guides Chomsky’s approach to the study of language is that when we assert that Tom is a speaker of English, we are ascribing to Tom a certain mental structure. This structure is somehow represented in Tom’s brain, so we are also implicitly saying that Tom’s brain is in a certain state. If Clare is also a speaker of English, it is reasonable to suppose that Clare’s linguistic cognitive system is similar to Tom’s. By contrast, Jacques, a speaker of French, has a cognitive system which is different in important respects from those of Tom and Clare, and different again to that of Guo, a speaker of Chinese. This proposal raises four fundamental research questions:

(1)

What is the nature of the cognitive system which we identify with knowing

a language?

(2)

How do we acquire such a system?

(3)

How is this system used in our production and comprehension of speech?

(4)

How is this system represented in the brain?

Pursuit of these questions defines four areas of enquiry: linguistics itself, developmental linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics.

At the outset, it is important to be clear that an answer to question (1) is logically prior to answers to questions (2), (3) and (4); unless we have a view on the nature of the relevant cognitive system, it makes no sense to enquire into its acquisition, its use in production and comprehension and its representation in the brain.

Question (1), with its reference to a cognitive system, looks as if it ought to fall in the domain of the cognitive psychologist. However, the Chomskian approach maintains that we can formulate and evaluate proposals about the nature of the human mind by doing linguistics, and much of this book is intended to establish the plausibility of this view. In order to do linguistics, we usually rely on native speakers of a language who act as informants and provide us with data; and it is 1